All the Little Pieces
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 1983-2012. How do you get to know someone who doesn't like to talk about their past? All the little views that others have had of Dean Winchester. No slash. No spoilers. Reviews appreciated.
1. Chapter 1 Lawrence, 1983

_**Lawrence, Kansas, May-November 1983**_

* * *

><p>Mary Winchester leaned back against the highly stacked pillows, looking down at the baby in her arms. Nine pounds four ounces and the doctors had been joking with her about him being the next linebacker for the Wildcats. She'd smiled politely and told them to get their asses into gear and finish her stitches.<p>

She looked up as the door to the room opened, John peering around the edge, and under him, Dean's wide eyes staring at her.

"Do you want to meet your little brother, Dean?" She smiled at him as he nodded and ran into the room, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor, barely stopping himself from crashing into the side of the bed. John followed at a slightly more sedate pace and lifted his son onto the edge of the bed beside his mother.

"He looks scrunchy." Dean looked down at the baby, his expression critical. "And red."

Behind him, John snorted, turning it into a coughing fit as he caught Mary's eye. "He'll smooth out in a day or two, Dean, he just had a tight squeeze to get out."

"You looked like that when you were born too," Mary added, thinking that her firstborn hadn't been anywhere as exhausting, and at the more average birth weight of eight pounds five ounces, a lot easier to get out.

She watched him as he tentatively extended a finger to touch his brother's hand.

"He's going to get bigger, isn't he?" He looked up at her, and she nodded.

"Yes, he's going to get a lot bigger." She glanced at John, peering over her shoulder at his newest son. "It'll be a while before you can play together though."

"That's okay. He doesn't seem to be much fun." He wriggled backwards toward the edge of the bed. "Can I go and play in the toys room?"

John and Mary exchanged a glance. "Yeah, but stay in there, Dean, until I come and get you. No wandering off."

"Yep, okay." He rolled onto his stomach, dropping feet first off the edge of the bed and onto the floor and raced back out the door.

"Well, that wasn't much of a bonding session." John walked to the door and closed it.

Mary rolled her eyes. "He's four. It'll happen, in time."

* * *

><p>"Dean, can you wipe Sam's face, please?" Mary glanced at the table, lifting the pot off the stove as she shut the oven door with her hip.<p>

"Mom … it's icky. And gross. And he dribbles." Dean looked at his brother, his nose wrinkling up as he watched two peas re-emerge from Sam's mouth and fall onto the tray.

"I thought you were going to be my helper today?" She set the pot onto the drainer and looked around distractedly.

Dean's brows drew together. He looked at the mess over his baby brother's face and the tray under it and exhaled gustily. "Oh, all right."

"Thanks, baby." She pointed to the counter. "Clean cloth is there."

He slid off his chair and picked up the white and yellow striped cloth, kicking the step over to the sink, climbing up and turning on the tap.

Mary turned the heat down on the vegetables which were about to boil over and looked into the oven again. The chicken was almost done, just a few more minutes. She shut the door and turned around, leaning back against the countertop as she watched Dean wipe Sam's face carefully, the baby staring at him in fascination. It wasn't often Dean got this close to him, and Sammy reached out a chubby hand to touch his brother's hair, long and feathery and overdue for a cut.

"Oh! Yuck! Mom!" Dean leapt back, staring in horror at the pureed carrot that had been transferred from Sam's fingers to his hair.

Mary laughed. "It's just carrot, Dean. It won't kill you. Finish up and I'll do the tray."

Bottom lip stuck out mulishly, Dean approached Sam again, leaning back away from him as he wiped his baby brother's chin and swiped at his hands. Sam gave a throaty laugh and waved his hands at Dean.

Mary watched in amazement as Dean laughed a little too, the carrot in his hair forgotten as the two boys looked into each other's faces. Her eldest son's eyes were as wide as Sam's, and she could have sworn there was some kind of communication between them, silent and for siblings only.

"You have to be clean, Sammy, before you touch people. You gonna make people sick if you got mashed food all over you."

She could hardly hear his voice, the seriously given advice for the baby's ears only. Sam stared at him and smiled. Dean continued to murmur brotherly wisdom as he cleaned him, and didn't say anything at all when Sam's fingers reached out and wiped down his cheek.

* * *

><p>"Can I read a story to Sammy, Mom?" Dean sat on the couch, clean and in his fighter plane pyjamas. Mary glanced at the clock. Another ten minutes to bedtime.<p>

"Sure, sweetie, do you want me to get him for you?" She looked at the play mat on the floor, Sam sitting up and batting blocks around the middle of it.

"No, I got him." Dean wriggled off the wide couch and crouched beside his brother, putting his arms around him. At six months, Sam was still a big baby, and Dean held him tightly, his little brother almost half his height. Mary bit her lip as she watched him carefully roll Sam onto the couch, scrambling up beside him and settling them both back against the overstuffed cushions. Dean was more than careful, she thought, he was absolutely focussed on Sam's safety.

"All okay, Dean?"

He looked up at her as he picked up the big picture book, and nodded. "Sure, Mom."

She watched Sam grab at the pages, Dean carefully lifting his fingers off them as he turned them and read slowly. Where had he learned this patience, this care? He took the same care even when he played, she knew, doing everything methodically, organising things so that he always knew where everything was. Nature, not nurture, she thought. Not from her side of the family either. Watching him, she felt a wild emotion in her chest, not sorrow or joy, not fear or guilt or gratitude, but a strange blend of all of them, tightening her throat. They were so beautiful, her boys, so perfect. Maybe that was a mother's bias, maybe every mother felt it, but it resonated through her, bringing tears to her eyes.

Hearing John come in a few minutes later, she looked up and held a finger to her lips as he turned into the living room. He stopped, and listened, walking quietly up to the back of the couch to look at them.

Sam watched his brother's face as much as the pictures on the paper in front of him. Dean pointing to the words as he read each one, his fingertip moving slowly across the page, his sweet child's voice clear and full of expression as he tried to convey the plight of the three little pigs and the intentions of the Big Bad Wolf to his baby brother.

John looked at Mary, sitting curled up in the armchair, her hand over her mouth as she watched them. He could see the shimmer in her eyes, reflected from the lamp beside her, and felt his chest tighten a little at her emotion. She looked up at him, fingers falling away to reveal a smile that wobbled slightly at the corners.

_Our sons_, her eyes said. _Our boys._

Smiling in agreement, he looked back at them, side by side on the sofa. Nothing that had come before in his life could've prepared him for this, he decided as his breath caught in his throat. A surge of protective love flared, tempered and edged with a rush of fierce determination that shook through him. He would do anything to keep them safe. Anything at all.

The feeling dissolved, leaving him feeling empty and light-headed. Glancing at Mary, he came around the end of the sofa, sitting down beside his sons. Nothing bad was going to happen to them, he told himself, not sure why that thought didn't seem to hold the same certainty today as it had yesterday.

Just a long day, he thought, looking down at the bowed heads beside him. Tomorrow would be better.


	2. Chapter 2 Blue Earth, 1989

_**Blue Earth, Minnesota, July 1989**_

* * *

><p>Jim Murphy opened the door and ushered the boys inside. At ten, Dean knew the drill, carrying their bags upstairs to the room that was theirs when they stayed, Sam trailing behind him.<p>

Jim watched the Impala drive off, the taillights disappearing through the trees that sheltered the drive, and closed the door slowly behind him. He walked down the hall and stopped, seeing Dean and Sam sitting on the stairs in front of him.

"Uncle Jim, is Geny going to be alright?" Dean asked softly, glancing at his brother. "Dad said Valentina was … died."

Jim nodded, drawing in a deep breath. "Your father will make sure that Geny is fine, Dean. It's very hard to lose someone suddenly, it takes a little time to adjust."

He looked at Sam's too-big eyes and tried to think of something that would distract them, for a few hours at least.

"How about a hot chocolate and some late-night TV for a while?" He gestured toward the kitchen and Dean got up, taking Sam's hand and gently tugging him down the stairs and along the hallway to the kitchen.

The ritual was always the same, at least here. The small copper-bottomed saucepan had to be watched vigilantly as the milk heated. The exact amount of drinking chocolate spooned in and stirred until the liquid was smooth and lump-free. Jim watched Dean follow the procedure he'd taught him a couple of years before, the older boy's voice low as he explained what he was doing to his little brother. Getting the mugs down from the shelf, the priest noted with a little amusement that Sam remembered which ones were their special ones – Dean's black, chosen for car, he suspected. Sam's a sunny yellow one that had a picture of an obesely self-satisfied cat on the side.

They carried their mugs into the small living room, and Jim found the remote, flicking through the channels. He was beginning to regret the suggestion as he found horror movie after horror movie, foreign dramas and film noir filling the airwaves. Then an orange-red car flashed onto the screen, spinning out on a dirt road, and he lifted his finger from the remote as the theme song for the show played with a lazy country beat.

Glancing at Dean's face, he realised that the rerun was just what was needed, and he hoped that John didn't have any particular feelings about the good ol' boys of Hazzard county, one way or the other.

In the warm room, and despite the numerous explosions and crashes on the screen, he watched Sam fall asleep, gradually toppling sideways on the sofa, his head falling onto his brother's leg within the first fifteen minutes. Dean looked down, mouth opening to tell Sam that he was missing all the good stuff, then closing again with the words unsaid. Jim watched him settle back into the cushions and pull the crocheted throw from the back of the sofa down over his brother, his eyes remaining glued to the TV.

When the episode had finished, he turned around to Jim, grinning and said quietly, "Thanks, Uncle Jim. That was awesome." He glanced at Sam. "Too bad he missed it, but he really needed to sleep."

Jim's mouth lifted slightly at one corner. "Yeah. And you too." He got up from his chair and moved next to the couch. "I'll carry Sam up."

"No, it's okay. I got him." He eased his thigh from under his brother's head, lifting back the throw and sliding his arms under the boy's shoulders and knees.

"Night, Uncle Jim."

Jim nodded, watching him carry Sam out of the room and up the stairs.

* * *

><p>"Dean." Jim said quietly to the boy sitting next to him. "Is Sam alright?"<p>

Dean looked up from the gun barrel he was cleaning, glancing through the open doorway to the armchair where Sam was curled up, watching cartoons on the television.

"Yeah, he doesn't talk much when he's upset. He misses Valentina." His gaze swivelled around to the man next to him. "She was like a mom to Sam, whenever we stayed there."

Jim nodded, wondering at the boy's omission. He watched Dean run the cleaner down the barrel and hold it up to the light, squinting slightly as he looked for any leftover residue.

"Are you okay, Dean?"

The boy stopped what he was doing for a second, frozen in place, then slowly lowered the barrel back to the table and put the cleaner down, his eyes fixed on the disassembled parts in front of him.

"I miss her too, Uncle Jim." He fiddled with the cloth on the table. "She wasn't like Mom, but she was nice and she looked after us." He looked back at his little brother, unmoving in the armchair. "Sam never knew Mom, not really. So Valentina was like the only Mom he had."

"He's worried that if something like that can happen to Valentina, maybe it can happen to Dad." Dean lifted his face and his eyes met Jim's, bright green in morning light, shimmering behind a veil of held-back tears.

"You're worried about that too?" Jim leaned forward, resting his hand on Dean's shoulder.

A tear slipped free over the lower lid and Dean turned away, ducking his head and wiping at his eyes.

"No. Dad's not like other hunters, he can survive anything," he said, sniffing slightly, his face still averted.

Jim leaned back in the chair and rubbed his fingertips over his forehead, wondering what to say to that.

"Your Dad's a good hunter, Dean," he finally offered, knowing it was a meaningless thing to say, especially to this boy, who had seen too much for a child his age, and who knew too much even for someone of twice his years. There was nothing else he could say, though, he couldn't offer a guarantee that John would always get out alive and in one piece.

"Yeah." Dean nodded, turning his attention back to the parts on the table. He started putting the gun back together, dribbling a little oil into the mechanism, wiping it all off. "Jim, do you know what happened to my mother?"

Jim felt his heart stutter in his chest. He looked down, wishing that the question hadn't been asked, wishing that he knew what to tell the boy.

"I know a little, Dean. But you need to talk to your Dad about it."

Dean nodded again, too fast, as if he'd expected that answer. "Dad won't talk about it. I remember … when I was little, he used to tell me about her, we used to talk about her a bit. Now he just gets angry."

Jim knew why that was. He couldn't tell the boy next to him, though. "Dean, your Dad, he misses your mother a lot," he said, feeling his way around an answer that would satisfy.

He knew John had taken control of the way he'd felt about what Mary had done, knew too that not one thing they'd found in the last two years had helped the man to let his grief go. "Sometimes, when people feel that way, they just can't talk about the person, it hurts too much."

Seeing Dean swallow a couple of times, he waited patiently. It took the boy time to get things out, full of emotion but already trying to be like his father, and not show it. He wondered sometimes if John saw the way his oldest boy was trying to be a man, long before he was ready.

"I don't know if I should tell Sam what I remember about Mom, so that he, you know, he has some kind of memories of her."

Jim closed his eyes. "I think you should, Dean. Sam needs to know about her. All that you can remember."

"I thought so too." Dean looked up at him. "I just don't want Dad to get mad."

"I don't think he will," Jim said firmly. _Not after I've talked to him about it_.

* * *

><p>The night was hot and breathless, and they sat around the small table on the porch, drinking cold lemonade and playing cards, watching the heat lightning on the horizon and hearing the occasional mutter of distant thunder. By ten, Jim had given up on the idea of getting the boys to bed before the storm broke. Inside the house, it was like an oven and tossing and turning on hot sheets didn't do anyone any good.<p>

Sam laid a card on the top of the pile, his hand hovering a few inches from it as he waited for his brother's next card to come down. Jim watched the concentration with amusement. The end of the little boy's tongue was sticking out slightly, and Dean's eyes were narrowed, his hand moving more and more slowly toward the pile with the card.

It wasn't a match, and they both relaxed, picking up their drinks and looking at each other with practised expressions of nonchalance.

"When will Dad be back?"

Both Dean and Jim looked at Sam. It had been over a week since they'd arrived and it was the first time he'd spoken.

"Uh, in a couple of days, Sammy." Jim looked back down at his cards, trying to hide his surprise and relief, trying not to make too much of the moment.

"Are you playing, Uncle Jim, or are you going to look at those cards a bit longer?" Dean looked at him, an eyebrow lifted, an entreaty in his eyes.

"Son, you have a lot to learn about the art of cards," Jim told him loftily, and laid his card on the top of the pile. It was the same as the card Dean had just put down and he registered it as he pulled his hand back, seeing Dean's eyes widen from the corner of his eye.

"SNAP!" Dean's hand flashed out and claimed the pile. He winked at Sam and looked at Jim, mouth curved into a knowing smirk. "Your reflexes are crap, Uncle Jim."

Jim laughed, shrugging. "They're there when it counts, Dean."

The rumble of thunder was closer now, and the very first stirrings of a slight breeze ruffled their hair. Jim looked at his watch and set his cards down.

"Looks like we'll be getting that storm after all." He stood up and drained his glass. "Time for bed, you two."

Dean looked at his pile in dismay. "But I –"

"Yeah, and you don't think I'm just gonna let you keep winning, do you?" Jim shook his head, smiling at the answering scowl.

"Dean's a sore loser, Uncle Jim." Sam looked up at him, putting his cards on top of Jim's as he got up. "He can be really mean."

Dean's mouth dropped open. "I am not a sore loser, twerp. You're a sore loser."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am –"

"This isn't really getting us anywhere." Jim interjected dryly, hoping he was concealing the lightening of his heart as well as the older boy. "Sammy, go brush your teeth. Dean, help me get this packed away."

Sam turned away and ran into the house, and Jim could hear his feet pounding up the stairs. He looked at Dean.

"Good to hear him back to normal."

"Yeah." Dean smiled slightly, straightening out his pile of cards and gathering up the others.

Under that small expression, Jim saw his relief, expanding outward. For the first time since they'd gotten here, he saw Dean's shoulders relax and the boy who was trapped under the responsibility he'd willingly shouldered emerged, looking out of the green eyes.

* * *

><p>The cry in the darkness came just after the crack of the lightning strike and the ground-shaking roll of thunder, and Jim snapped awake, sitting up as the sheet fell off him. <em>The boys<em>.

He slid from the bed and walked quietly down the hall, pushing their door open slightly. He could hear Dean's voice, murmuring softly over Sam's sobs. Through the gap, he saw Dean sitting on Sam's bed, his arms wrapped around the little boy, rocking him gently.

"S'okay, Sammy, it was just a bad dream. Because of the storm. Ssshhh."

Sam's weeping subsided into hiccups, then silence as he listened to his brother.

"We all get bad dreams, they're not real. There aren't any real monsters, Sammy, you know that. Just too much TV." Dean smoothed down Sam's hair, patted his back.

"But it looked real, Dean. Not like the cartoons, not like pictures, it h-h-had bright eyes and it looked at me." Sam wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking up at Dean's face. "And Dad was there."

Dean rested his cheek against the top of Sam's head, brows drawn together. "In bad dreams, everything looks real. Doesn't make it real. And if Dad was there, he woulda killed it, long before it got anywhere near you." He lifted his head and looked down at Sam, wiping the tears from his cheeks. "You know Dad protects us from anything bad."

Sam nodded, a little reluctantly, Jim thought, watching silently.

"You protect me more."

Dean shook his head, shifting around slightly. "I just clean up your messes, Sammy, make sure you get to bed on time." He smiled at him. "Dad keeps us safe."

Jim drew back from the door, leaning against the hallway wall. Sam had it right, he thought wearily. Dean was his protector, his all-the-time protector, not his father. John loved them, wanted them safe, but he wasn't there. Dean was.


	3. Chapter 3 Sioux Falls, 1992

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota. November, 1992**_

* * *

><p>Bobby turned off the engine and the tick of the slowly cooling metal was the only sound they could hear.<p>

The early morning mist shrouded the woods and fields, rising from the river and the marshes, from the thin scrim of ice that whitened the ground, hiding the details of the land and swallowing sound, muffling even the heavy clunks of the truck doors closing.

"You ready?" Bobby looked over the boys beside him. Dean, getting tall and lanky now, the bolt-action 308 Winchester 70 rifle slung over one shoulder, and Sammy, still small and skinny, holding his .22 with the barrel pointed to the ground, the ammo bag strap across his shoulder and chest, both of them nodding seriously at him.

"You remember what I taught you last time? Hunting in the woods?" Bobby started to walk for the forest, glancing back over his shoulder at them.

"Yessir." Dean followed him, walking in the old man's footprints, his hand anchoring the butt of the rifle against his hip.

"Yes, Uncle Bobby." Sam hurried to catch up to his brother, as they disappeared into the mist.

"Alright." Bobby walked on, confidently across the rough ground that he knew well enough to walk blindfolded. Around them, the skeletal branches of the bare trees were black against the soft grey of the ground fog, and the trunks wavered in and out of view as they got closer and left them behind. He stopped a few yards onto the narrow trail and turned around.

"What can you hear?"

Dean listened. He could hear the steady drip of moisture falling from the branches of the trees and the leaves of the evergreen shrubs falling onto the thick carpet of dead leaves under their feet. He could hear a rustle, somewhere to their right, deeper in the forest.

Sam shook his head. "I can't hear anything."

"You remember what that means?" Bobby looked at them, feeling the moisture in the air soaking into his jacket. He was getting too old for these early morning hunts, he thought absently, his joints were stiffening slightly from the damp chill.

"Means that the animals know we're in the forest. Or something else is here, something big." Dean looked up at him.

Bobby nodded. "So don't be clomping your great feet hard onto the ground, step soft, watch out for the ground cover, try and be as quiet as you can. Deer have pretty good hearing." He turned away, moving down the trail silently, avoiding the dry leaves close to the edge.

Behind him, the boys followed, paying attention to the noises they were making, turning to avoid the occasional branch that protruded out onto the trail, picking up and putting down their feet as silently as they could.

A mile along, Bobby stopped, holding his hand up. Ahead, through the trees, he could see the outline of the young buck, the rack almost indistinguishable from the bare branches in the pearlescent light and shadows of the mist. He glanced back at Dean, gesturing sharply to the deer. Dean looked past him and nodded, picking out the shape quickly.

The air was still and heavy, and Bobby moved slowly, hearing nothing behind him, glad that they'd remembered some of what they'd been taught. Twice they stopped and froze as the buck raised its head, looking around, moving on when it returned to stripping the bark from the shrub at its feet.

They crouched between the trees, and Bobby leaned close to Dean, his voice just a breath against the boy's ear.

"Behind the shoulder, take your time."

Dean nodded and lifted the rifle, closing an eye as he sighted along the barrel, his finger slipping onto the trigger. Bobby watched him, noting the small, careful movements with approval, the final adjustments, the smooth pull on the trigger. The rifle shot cracked into the silence and he watched the deer bound out of the clearing and down to the river, crossing the shallow water in two leaps and disappearing into the forest beyond it.

"What happened?" He frowned down the rifle. The boy should have nailed that buck easily.

"I don't know." Dean looked up at him, shaking his head slightly. "Must have shifted the barrel slightly when I pulled on the trigger."

Bobby stared at him for a moment. He hadn't seen the barrel move at all. He sighed and shrugged, getting to his feet. "Well, never mind. We'll find another one."

* * *

><p>An hour later, Bobby was scowling down at them. They'd found four deer in that time, in perfect situations. Both boys had managed to miss all four times.<p>

"Waste of my time and ammunition if you two are going to miss all the time," he growled at Dean.

Dean's brows lifted, his eyes widening innocently. "It wasn't on purpose, Bobby, I just must've moved at the last second."

"In a pig's eyes, it wasn't on purpose, Dean Winchester. Don't you lie to me, boy. Takes as much skill to miss a shot like that as it does to make it." He turned around, heading back down the trail, muttering to himself.

Dean looked at Sammy, the corner of his mouth lifting up. Sam grinned back at him, and they followed Bobby out of the woods and back to the truck.

* * *

><p>The firelight flickered over the faces of the man and the boy who sat beside it, the circle of light reaching out to illuminate the tree trunks and rocks, the small tent and the half-covered bedroll of the camp. Sam was already asleep in the tent.<p>

"Alright, you wanna tell me what you two were playing at today?" Bobby hooked the coffee pot from the embers and poured the thick black coffee into his mug, setting the pot back as he looked at Dean.

Dean shrugged, keeping his gaze on the fire. "We didn't need it."

"You think that when the time comes you do need it, you're gonna be able to do it without practising?" Bobby asked him sourly.

"You said it yourself, Bobby. Took as much skill to miss as to hit it. If I had to, I could do it." Dean glanced at him.

"Cocky little shit, ain't you?"

Dean's mouth twisted into a small half-smile. "You think I'd freeze up and miss, if I was hungry?"

Bobby grunted non-committally and drank his coffee.

"Sammy's been having nightmares." Dean's gaze was back on the fire. "I didn't want to make that worse."

"Nightmares about what?" Bobby shifted slightly, looking over his shoulder at the tent.

"You know what." He exhaled loudly. "Dad. Hunting. Monsters. Ghosts."

Bobby was silent. Neither of the boys had gotten much of a childhood. Dean had kept the truth from his brother as long as he could, but living the way they did, it had been an impossible hope to think that he could do it forever. Or even for a few years more.

"I wanted him to stay a kid, just for a bit longer." He looked over at Bobby. "He shouldn't have to worry about this crap yet."

Neither of them should have had to worry about this crap, Bobby thought tiredly. They should have been thinking about school and friends, and girls and ball games. Building treehouses and go-karts, riding bikes and coming home at sundown tired out from the fun in their days.

John had taught Dean to shoot at six, Sam at seven. Both boys knew how to take care of their weapons, were completely disciplined about following orders, about looking after themselves, could put on a competent field-dressing and set up an overnight camp in ten minutes. Their childhoods had disappeared years ago.

Dean talked as if he were tough, but Bobby had soothed his nightmares whenever they'd stayed with him. The boy's imagination was a lot more powerful than his little brother's or his father's, Bobby thought, so much so that he would make a good hunter, a great one, even. Get inside of the heads of the monsters he tracked and give himself bucketloads of nightmares when the hunts were over and the victims were counted.

Dean looked around at the old man's continuing silence. "You think I'm wrong?"

"No, son, I don't think you're wrong," Bobby said, letting his breath out in a quiet sigh. "The load's the load, Dean. Whether we can carry it or not, we get what we get. I jus' don't see how you can make that easier on Sam."

Dean ducked his head, drawing his legs up and wrapping his arms around them, tucking his chin against his forearm. "I was thinking, that maybe … if Dad agreed … Sam could stay with you a bit more."

Bobby's mouth quirked at one corner. "That'd be fine with me, Dean. Fine if you stayed too."

The boy shook his head decisively. "No, Dad needs backup, I need to be with him. But Sam, he's really smart, he's good at school stuff and he likes it. He could have a bit more of a normal life, for a couple more years."

Bobby turned to look at him. "You deserve a childhood too, you know, Dean."

He watched the characteristic duck of the head. "I'm alright."

He wasn't alright, Bobby knew. He was nearly doubled over under the load of responsibility that had been placed on him, that he'd placed on himself, his self-confidence being eroded by the demands of keeping his father and little brother safe and not being sure he could. Maybe it would be better if Sam, at least, was removed from his load, protected by an adult so that he didn't have to worry so much about him.

"I'll talk to your Daddy when he gets back, Dean." Bobby finished his coffee. "Not sure it'll do much good, you understand, but I'll talk to him."

Dean nodded.

* * *

><p>"You know, Dean, this is really pretty good writing." Sam looked up from the paper he was reading to his brother, sitting across the kitchen table from him and honing his knife. At the sink, Bobby stilled, the dishcloth still on the plate, his hands in the soapy warm water as he listened.<p>

Dean looked across the table, brows drawing together. "Where'd you get that?"

"It was here." Sam gestured at the pile of school books sitting to one side of him.

"That's my homework, put it back." Dean looked at the paper, then back to his brother. "Now."

Sam shrugged, replacing the paper on the pile. "I was just saying it was a good piece."

"Right." Dean dropped his gaze to his knife again, the small circles over the stone a little faster now.

"Why do you pretend that you hate school, when you could do well if you wanted to?" Sam leaned on the table, watching him.

"I'm not _pretending_ to hate school. It's a waste of my time."

"Dad says you gotta go. If you have to go anyway, wouldn't it be better to at least try to like it?"

"No." Dean looked up again, lips compressed. "And let's just drop this conversation there."

"Sure." Sam gathered his books and carried them out. Bobby heard Dean's deep exhale and starting washing the plate again, looking down at the sudsy water absently.

He'd noticed this before, a tendency to downplay any achievement that might be conceivably regarded as academic. Or thoughtful. Bobby'd never figured out why that was. An old, odd memory rose into his mind, from his school days.

Two girls had moved into town, in his freshman year. Two years apart. What had their names been? Cleggmore. Uh, Charlene had been the older one. The smart one. And Alice, had been the younger one. The pretty one. He remembered them going through high school. The smart one and the pretty one. He'd dated Alice a few times, before he met Karen. She hadn't just been pretty, she'd gotten good grades, could have done even better if it hadn't been so accepted that she wasn't the smart one. She'd never believed him though.

He glanced over his shoulder at Dean, hearing the soft burr of the knife blade circling on the stone. Was that was going on with Dean? He didn't think he was good enough to compete with Sam? Or was he staying out of the way so that they never had to?

"You doing alright with your school work, Dean?" He picked up another plate and put it into the water.

"Yeah, no problem." Dean hunched a little a deeper into the chair.

"Sam's right, you know. If you gotta be there, you might as well pick up whatever you can. Never know when stuff like that comes in useful down the road." He put the dish in the drainer and picked up the next.

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip. "It's boring, Bobby. None of it has anything to do with real life."

Bobby smiled, glancing back at him. "For most people, all of it has to do with real life."

"We're not most people." Dean looked along the edge of the blade and set the stone onto the table. "And I'm never going to be like most people."

"You might want to get out of hunting, one day," Bobby suggested mildly.

"I won't." He stood up, turning around and looking at the man's back. "What we do is important. It saves lives. You think that working in some job somewhere is going to feel like that?"

"You think there's any rule that says you can't be a good hunter and have a few aces up your sleeve if you do want to change your mind one day?"

"I think I need to concentrate on what I want to do." Dean looked down at the essay he'd written for his English class. "No one thinks I can do this crap anyway." He screwed up the sheet and threw it on the floor, turning on his heel and walking out of the room.

Bobby watched him go, his eyes worried. He dried his hands and bent to pick up the discarded paper, smoothing it out and moving under the overhead light to read it. When he reached the end, he sighed. Sam was right. It was good. It was expressive and passionate and written with a feeling for the subject that seemed a lot older than the average thirteen year old. And why not, he thought suddenly, Dean was a lot older than the average thirteen year old in a lot of ways.

He sat down at the table and picked up the English notebook, flicking through it. The marks leapt out at him in red ink. At the first one, he read the work, his frown becoming deeper as he finished it, looking at the D that sat at the top of the page. He turned the page over and started the next one. He read right through the assignments of the last four weeks.

Dean's teacher was an asshole, he thought. There was no reason for those marks for that work and some of the comments scrawled over the pages were downright personal. He slid the essay inside the book and closed it, setting it back on the pile, and walked around the table and out in to the hall. The boys shared a room upstairs, but Dean had taken to going into the yard at night if he wanted to be alone. Bobby went out the back door and rounded the house, seeing the boy's outline silhouetted against the outside light of the workshop.

"Dean." He came up beside him, leaned against the panel of the Nova he was working on. "What's going on at school?"

Dean looked at him and shook his head. "I don't know. Guy hates me. Doesn't matter what I put in, or how much time I work on something, I never get better than a C, and …" He shook his head again.

"You do anything that might have gotten him POed at you when you started?" He had to ask, Dean had a bad habit of smart-mouthing off if a comment came at the right moment, thinking nothing of it at the time.

"No. I didn't say a word to anyone." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter, Dad'll be back in a couple of days and we'll be somewhere else."

Bobby closed his eyes. He was right. They would be gone. There would be a new town. A new school. He could see why the kid couldn't see the point of trying to learn. Between asshole teachers and the constant moving, he'd never seen any rewards for work put in at school.

"I don't want a normal life, Bobby," Dean's voice broke in the middle of the words, cracking high and then dropping low. He cleared his throat. "Nothing about me fits in anymore. Half the time I don't know what they're talking about, I'm always trying to catch up. I'm kind of sick of it."

"I can't argue with that, son. But look at this way, no one benefits your learning 'cept you. Makes no difference to the teachers, or the school, or your dad, or me. Only you. So whatever you can learn and take away with you, that's yours forever. They can't take that. You own it."

Beside him, he heard the soft sigh. "I guess."

"You don't have to impress anyone but yourself. But giving up, not trying, that's just shooting yourself in the foot, Dean. You're the only one who's going to lose out."

There was no question in Bobby Singer's mind that the boy leaning up against the blocked car beside him was smart. He'd seen Dean figure out plans for hunts, seen him break down mechanical problems, watched him work out electrical circuits that were more efficient and simpler than the commercial ones for the same purpose … and in the work he'd just read, there was more, more even than the pragmatic, logical bent Dean had. A depth and a way of seeing things that were … rare.

But, he thought tiredly, the boy wasn't going to believe that, not now, and maybe not ever.

He wondered when John would be back. He would talk to him about Sam, he decided. And about Dean, and maybe they'd be able to work out something.


	4. Chapter 4 Covington, 2000

_**Covington, Indiana, July 2000.**_

* * *

><p>The diner was small, crowded and redolent with the smells of bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, burgers and coffee. Sam pushed his food around his plate, his appetite gone.<p>

Dean had been fine for about a day after he and Dad had finally reached Blue Earth from Flagstaff. He'd been a bit subdued, but mostly fine. Then slowly, gradually, he'd started to withdraw. Now, his brother wasn't talking at all, at least not to him. He seemed to be wary around Dad as well, but at least he would talk and listen to him.

Watching him furtively from under the hair that flopped over his forehead, Sam could see that Dean's appetite wasn't any better than his own. There was still a sausage and a pile of bacon to one side of the plate.

He knew that his brother wasn't sleeping much. He'd been woken the last few nights by the nightmares, Dean's voice muttering in the darkness, the sounds of the covers being thrown back or falling to the floor. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he was dreaming about, to know what was bothering him. But he wouldn't talk about it.

Knowing what the problem was didn't help. Even knowing, pretty much, what Dean was feeling about it didn't really help. There was nothing either of them could do to change what had happened. He'd needed to get out and he'd gone, and he hadn't thought of how Dean would react, hadn't thought of his brother's overwhelming sense of responsibility for him, hadn't thought about his father's orders or even considered how he would deal with Dean when he found out.

And that wasn't the worst bit, he thought now, glancing up at the pale, drawn face on the other table again. The worst bit was that Dean knew why he'd gone, he'd understood why he hadn't thought of them, but it had broken something, deep inside of his brother, to realise that he didn't mean the same to Sam, as Sam meant to him.

He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his face and looked up.

"How long did Dad say he'd been on the side-trip?"

Dean kept his eyes on his plate. "He didn't."

"So, where are we meeting him again?" Sam tried again.

"Cut it out. You were there, you heard him." Dean stood abruptly and pulled his wallet out, tossing a couple of tens onto the table and grabbing his jacket. He was halfway out the diner when Sam caught up with him. The two of them were on their own. Their father was checking out another lead, but would meet them in Alabama in a couple of days' time. Sam strode out of the diner and down the street toward the Impala, watching his brother unlock it and get in, his face dark and closed.

Two days of silence between them, the rock music filling the car, right at the edge of bearable decibels. Two days of silence, sitting in motel rooms, the TV, if there was one, and if it was working, blaring away with no one really watching it. Two days of silence when they ate, Dean unable to look at him half the time, his face as shuttered as it was now, his eyes darkened with a pain that he couldn't or wouldn't let go.

Sam slid into the passenger seat and leaned back against the cool glass of the window. His whole life, from his earliest memories, his brother had looked after him, taken care of him, made sure he was fed, clean, dressed, rested, taught him to do … pretty much everything. Dean had stood between him and the creatures that had occasionally managed to find them when their father hadn't been around. He'd stood between him and their father when the rage had been spilling over and looking for something to bite. He'd been a constant, not always nice, not always friendly, but always there, and always, always at his back, someone to talk to, someone to listen, someone, sometimes, to cry with.

Even after all that time, Sam knew he still didn't really understand his brother. He knew the facts, he knew the habits and the tells and the expressions and the strengths and the weaknesses. But he didn't understand him. He didn't understand the unyielding loyalty to family. To Dad. He didn't understand the places in his brother where Dean had no armour at all, where he could be hurt so deeply that it would feel like a mortal wound. He'd seen him hurt, usually by Dad, rarely by the opposite sex, but he'd never really considered that anything could really get through the armour that his brother wore around him out of habit. And he hadn't known that that armour didn't exist for him.

He'd apologised and apologised and apologised, half a dozen times a day for weeks. It didn't help. After awhile Dean had told him to stop, had told him that he knew Sam hadn't meant it to turn out the way it had. And, in a drunken and overtired moment over a week ago, had told him that thing he'd always counted on, that Sam would do anything for him, as he would for his brother, had vanished the day he'd disappeared.

He still didn't understand it, really. Nothing had changed. He was the same person he'd always been. He didn't know how his taking off could have caused that break in Dean. There'd been times when his brother had walked out, driven out by frustration or pain or anger when the tension between the three of them had gotten too much. It was usually just an overnight thing, and he'd be back in the morning, maybe nursing a black eye or moving a bit stiffly with bruised ribs for a day or two, whatever frustration or anger he'd been feeling vented with a double dose of alcohol and a fight. He'd never actually packed up and left them, Sam had to admit.

He turned around, looking at his brother, mouth opening to say something, and Dean, seeing the half-formed movement in the corner of his eye, reached over to the stereo, his finger and thumb finding the volume control unerringly, twisting it hard to the right. Zeppelin filled the car, drowning out whatever Sam might have been about to say, pounding at their eardrums, making the windows hum in resonance with the insistent beat.

Sam looked at his brother's profile, outlined against the farmland they drove through, for a long moment, then turned away, resting his temple against the window, and staring out at the scenery.

* * *

><p>It took Dean a little over ten hours to make the drive down to Alabama. They stopped twice for fuel and coffee and food. Sam realised the futility of trying to talk when the volume went back up to full after both stops, as soon as they hit the highway. He slept most of the way after the second time.<p>

"Dad's case notes." Dean tossed the file at him and turned away, sitting down on the couch with another pile of files, notes and photocopies and photographs. He took the lid off his beer, drank a mouthful and set it down beside the papers on the low table, and started to read.

Sam looked at the beer and sighed. He got up and got one for himself, then opened the file and began to look through it, pretending that the heavy silence in the room was how they always worked.

* * *

><p>After three hours, he had four pages of notes, a page of questions that needed to be followed up, a tension headache and his feelings had slowly mutated from wanting to make things right to a rising indignation that he was being punished for being who he was.<p>

"You know, this isn't fair." He looked at Dean. His brother lifted his gaze from the pages he was reading and slowly turned to look at him. He should have recognised the warning in the half-lidded eyes, the ever-so-slight lift of one brow.

"I didn't change, Dean. I'm still who I was." Sam ignored Dean's silence. "You and Dad, you knew how important graduation was to me, you just didn't care."

Dean picked up the beer and tipped it up, swallowing the last mouthful, nodding. "So it's our fault you broke all our protocols, packed your bag and ran off like a little kid, Sam?"

He had the grace to look away, a line of red rising up his neck at the rebuke. "You've known for a long time that I don't want this life, Dean."

"Yeah. I know that." Dean looked back at the notes in front of him. "I didn't think you'd ditch us. Didn't think you'd be such an asshole that you'd just take off, no note, no explanation, just gone." He looked back at his brother, eyes narrowed and jaw tense. "Didn't think you'd leave me holding the bag, when you knew how freaked Dad has been about sticking together."

Sam stared back at him, chin raised defiantly. "If I told you that I wanted out you would have locked the friggin' door and not let me out of the house."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I would have."

"So what choice did you leave me?"

His brother laughed, a short, humourless bark. "You just don't get it, do you?"

The accusation stung. He did get it. He'd gotten it years ago. His father wanted revenge for the death of his wife. His brother idolised the man and was happy to become a younger version, without any thought of what that meant. He got it.

"I want a normal life, Dean. I want to be with normal people."

His brother's head snapped around at that, eyes dark and narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean, Sam?"

"It means that I'm not like you and Dad, and I don't want to be." Sam knew where to aim, for maximum damage. He saw an emotion cross Dean's face, too fast to decipher.

Dean stood up and walked to the door, grabbing his jacket from the hook and yanking it on.

"Where are you going?" Sam looked at him, seeing the stiffness in his movements.

"Out." Dean opened the door, walked out and slammed it shut. Sam looked at the keys still sitting on the cupboard next to the door.

* * *

><p>At one a.m., he started to get worried. By two-thirty, he was pacing up and down the room, wondering if he should go looking for Dean. The fact that he'd left the car behind meant he'd gone to get drunk, Sam thought, but the bars around here would have closed long ago. His brother was predictable in many ways. He didn't stay the night when he went looking for a girl. He was always back, well before dawn. If not a girl, then what?<p>

At three, he grabbed the keys and his jacket and went out, locking the door behind him and going to the Impala. He started the engine and backed out carefully, turning onto the street, cruising slowly. Start with the nearest bar, and work his way out from there, he thought, chewing on his lip.

* * *

><p>He turned into the alley, the headlights lighting up the tableau near the other end, the men frozen in its beams. The engine's deep notes echoed from the brick walls as he pulled up, and Sam saw Dean lift his head, recognising the sound.<p>

Popping the glove box, Sam pulled out the Taurus it held, and turned off the engine, leaving the headlights on. Three men stood in front of him, one holding the collar of his brother's jacket, one standing behind the others, cradling an arm. The third one was beside Dean, leaning over him. Sam saw the man's knuckles were grazed and bloody, the red bright in the car's lights. He saw the short length of pipe the guy was holding, half-raised above his brother.

Dean was half-kneeling, one eye swollen shut, the other rolling around to try and see past the bright light. There was a split over his nose, which now sat to one side, blood covering his mouth and chin and shirt front. Another split over one cheek was also bleeding freely. The jawline under the other cheek was swelling, mottled as the bruising started to come out.

"Sam?" Dean's voice was hoarse and uneven. "That you?"

"Step away from him." Sam raised the Taurus, levelling the barrel at the man with the pipe.

"You must be the douche bag kid brother." The man grinned at his friend and jerked his thumb at Dean. "Told us all about you, he did."

Sam ignored the comment, flicking the safety off. "I said, step away."

The other man let go of his brother's jacket, and Dean slumped to the ground, leaning back against the dumpster behind him, his open eye vivid in the bright light from the car, standing out against the darkness of the bruises rising around it, the red of the blood that was under it.

"You remind him we don't like smart-mouthed punks here, kid." The man with the pipe backed away slowly. "Like to get their faces rearranged if they show up again."

The men kept backing for several yards, then turned and walked to the other end of the alley, disappearing into the darkness. Sam watched them go, waiting until he could no longer hear their footsteps before he put the safety back on and tucked the big gun into his jacket pocket. He walked toward Dean, and crouched in front of him.

"Douche bag, eh?"

Dean's eye rolled toward him. "You are a douche bag."

"Lucky for you I came looking." He gripped his brother's forearm, and pulled back, hauling him to his feet, lifting one arm over his shoulders. Dean hawked back and spat out a mouthful of blood, tilting his head back as he stumbled beside Sam to the car.

Leaning him against the rear door as he got the passenger door open, Sam shot a worried look at him as he eased his brother inside. He closed the door and went around to the driver's side. He'd have to take him to Emergency, he thought. The nose was broken, and he couldn't reset it himself, not without leaving it crooked. He didn't know what other injuries Dean had and he wasn't sure it was a good idea to ask.

"Family sticks together, Sammy."

"What do you think I'm doing here, Dean?" He looked over at him sourly. Putting the car in reverse, he twisted around to back out of the alley and onto the street, turning right for the hospital. The car's engine rumbled as he shifted up through the gears, glancing at the huddled form beside him, eyes closed now. He looked back at the road, making a right hand turn when he saw the sign for the Emergency room.

"You're all I've got, man."

The words were very soft, and Sam touched the brake, looking over at him, not sure that he heard them right.

"I'm still here, Dean. I'm still your brother."

There was no answer, and Sam drove on, pulling into the slot next to the ER bay and shutting off the car. He reached out and shook Dean's arm, realising that he'd passed out when he got no response.

Maybe that was a good thing, he thought nervously, his mind replaying his brother's words, hearing again the misery underlying them. Maybe he'd forget this for a while.

As the orderlies lifted his brother onto the gurney and Sam followed them into the ER, he wondered if he'd ever understand Dean. Or his father. He wasn't like them, trying to ignore the faint flush of guilt that twisted through him at the disloyalty of that thought. It wasn't something he could anything about. He just wanted something different.


	5. Chapter 5 Decker, 2002

_**Decker, Montana. August, 2002**_

* * *

><p>"Heads up, he's coming to." Clay looked across at the young man, bound tightly to the straight-backed wooden carver with rope around his chest, arms and ankles.<p>

"Bout time," Mike said sourly, lifting the shotgun from his knees and cocking it.

Clay looked at the trickle of dried blood at the back of the man's head, then to his cousin. "You hit him pretty hard."

"Not as hard as I'm gunna." He watched the boy's eyes open slowly, focussing as he lifted his head.

"John Winchester's boy, ain't you?" He stood up, holding the shotgun casually in one hand. "The oldest one? Dean?"

Dean's brows drew together as he looked up at the man in front of him. "Who're you?"

Mike moved fast for a big man, the butt of the shotgun slamming against Dean's jaw and snapping his head to one side.

"Better get this straight right now, boy." Mike looked down. "I ask the questions, you answer them. Any lip and it'll all get a lot worse."

The young man spat out the blood in his mouth and looked back up, the pain shoved down behind the anger in his eyes.

Mike's lips rose in a half-smile, admiring the kid's balls. Wasn't so common no more. He thought Clay's brat would'a been pissin' his pants and bawling by now.

"Where's your dad at, kid?"

"Don't know."

"Wrong answer." Mike smacked the butt of the gun down on fingers that rested along the flat wooden arm of the chair and the three of them heard the crack as the bones broke. He watched the kid's face, saw the skin pale, the freckles stand out, heard the grinding of his teeth as he clamped tightly them together, forcing the scream back down his throat.

"You getting this, Clay?" Mike turned to his cousin with a grin. "How long ya think it'll take him to learn to answer proper?"

Clay shook his head. "Depends on how many brains he's got, Mike."

Mike looked back down at Dean, eyes narrowing very slightly. "Where's your dad at, Dean?"

He saw the younger man's face tighten slightly, wariness now in the green eyes instead of sass.

"He went to check out a lead on a case, in Billings. He'll be back in a couple of days."

"There now. Didn't take long at all." Mike grinned at him. "Must have a good set of brains in that thick skull of your'n."

The kid sat still, his left hand still flat against the arm of the chair, his right clenched into a fist.

"We looked around for your brother, as well," Clay said from the table a few yards away. "Couldn't find him."

Dean's head turned slowly to look at him, his face expressionless.

"Your dad, see, well he was poking his nose into things that didn't concern him. Killed our cousin, Frank. Can't let that go."

"That's enough of the history lesson, Clay. This boy don't need to know anything about our business."

Clay looked down at the gun he was cleaning. "Just didn't want him to think there was no reason for this, Mike."

"You're hunters?" Dean looked up at Mike.

"Yeah, we're hunters." Mike glanced at Clay. "And we hunt what we want."

He saw the slight line form between Dean's brows. "Don't think too hard, boy. It really ain't none of your concern."

The kid was silent, looking down at his fingers, the broken ones already starting to swell.

"So, where's your brother?"

He looked up quickly at the man next to him, and this time Mike saw a bright and shining fear in the green eyes, the sight bringing a small smile to his face.

"Come on, ain't got all day." He lifted the shotgun slightly and saw the kid swallow.

"College."

Mike whistled and turned to look at Clay. "Hear that, Clay? College." He looked back at Dean. "Well, whoopty-do. How come he got to go to college and you had to stay behind?"

"Not my thing."

Mike laughed. "Yeah, couldn't deal with it meself either." He leaned forward slightly. "And which college did young Sam Winchester go to?"

Dean looked away.

"I said, which college, boy?" Mike straightened up slightly, raising the gun again. "Don't make me break something else."

"UCLA." Dean looked down at the floor of the shed, shoulders slumping in defeat. "Got a scholarship."

"My, a scholarship. Guess he's the brains of the outfit, then." Mike turned away and walked to the table, picking up the beer he'd left there, sitting down in the chair. "Have to go and pay that boy a visit, after we're done here."

Clay looked at him, his forehead wrinkling slightly. "Mike, we don't have to do that."

"Sure we do, don't want to leave anyone behind who might get the old itch for vengeance."

He turned to look at Dean, feeling the kid's eyes on him. "What are you looking at, boy?"

Dean's gaze didn't waver. The pretty green eyes were cold and empty, the fear and the anger and the wariness all gone, Mike thought. For some reason, the look in them sent a slight shiver down his spine.

"Nothing." The boy's voice was as cold and flat as his eyes. "I might not have gotten Dad's travel plans exactly right."

Mike put the bottle down and leaned forward, hand tightening around the gun at the edge in the kid's voice.

"That so?" He stood up and walked back to him. "And what did you get wrong?"

"Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he said he was going to your place." Dean said slowly, tilting his head to one side to look up at him, one side of his mouth lifting a little. "Said your wife called him and told him to get over there 'cause she needed a man to fuck her."

Both hunters froze as the words sank in. Clay rolled his eyes.

"Oh, geez, kid you shouldn't a said that." He looked at Mike who was staring at the young man with a frightening intensity.

"Get me the can, Clay, from the back of the truck." Mike's voice was low and husky.

"Oh, no, Mike, c'mon, he was just tryin' to rile you," he said nervously, fiddling with the cloth he held. "He's just a kid."

"Right now, Clay, you do it or I'll blow a hole in you." Mike tore his gaze from the kid and looked at his cousin, the barrel of the shotgun swinging up and around.

Clay nodded, putting his rifle back on the table and dropping the soft cloth on top of it.

"You think you're smart, kid?" Mike turned back to Dean. "You think you gonna make it out of here alive?"

"No." Dean stared up at him, his face stony.

"Damned right you're not. But I'd have put a bullet in your brain, taken you out nice and clean and quick, before you said that. Now, it's gonna be something else altogether."

Clay came back in, holding a five gallon red plastic jerrican. Mike watched as Dean's eyes dropped to it, saw the tremor that shook through him.

"Yeah, something else entirely." He took the can and unscrewed the lid, dropping it onto the floor. The raw reek of gasoline filled the space.

Lifting the can over the kid's head, he started to pour.

The liquid splashed down over Dean's hair, soaking into his clothes. Ducking his head, he screwed up his eyes tightly, mouth compressing as the fuel ran over his face.

"Clay, get his head up." Mike growled at the other man as he continued to empty the can.

Clay picked up his gun, and walked to the front of the chair, jamming the end of the barrel under Dean's chin and thrusting it up. The gasoline sloshed in a river over his face, going up his nose, and into his mouth as he tried to clear it.

Mike put down the can and looked at him. The fuel had saturated his clothing, filled his boots and coated his skin. Dean shook his head, drops of the gas flying off as he tried to get it off his eyes.

"Now, Dean … where's your father really at?" Mike's voice was low and soft, as he reached into a pocket.

Dean opened his eyes, the lids red and swelling and raw, stinging as the gas trickled into the corners.

"Fuck you," he said quietly, staring into Mike's eyes.

Mike lifted the lighter from his pocket, flicking the lid open and holding it in front of the kid's face. With the fumes rising all around them, the first spark would ignite the boy.

"Open the doors, Clay," he called over his shoulder. "Don't wanna cook anyone but this here punk kid."

Looking back at the defiant expression of the Winchester boy, Mike raised a brow.

"You wanna rethink that answer?" He shifted his thumb to the wheel. "Maybe, take a second or so to think about what's gonna happen to you if I light this and drop it onto you?"

Dean's gaze dropped to the lighter, eyes slightly unfocussed as the pain in them increased. He shook his head again suddenly, droplets flying from his hair onto Mike.

"Yeah, sorry." He shifted his gaze back up to Mike's face. "Fuck you, bitch."

Mike's face twisted and he raised his hand, the thumb running the wheel and the flame lighting.

The gunshot thundered in the closed space, the heavy calibre bullet almost taking Mike's hand off at the wrist, sending the lighter backward into a pile of straw at the back of the shed.

He screamed when he saw half of his hand hanging limply from the broken bones of his arm, looked up and saw the man's outline silhouetted against the brightness of the sunshine outside.

"Clay, get him!"

Clay lifted the rifle, and fired, but the man had gone, moving fast into the shed and to the right, and the next shot took Clay in the side, ploughing through ribs and lungs and heart, exiting messily out his back. He dropped in a kind of slow motion, as if in disbelief, the rifle thudding onto the dirt.

"Goddamn it!" Mike dove for the table, grabbing his shotgun from the top, twisting violently to avoid landing on his injury. He hit the ground on his shoulder, the impact jarring the entire arm anyway, and he screamed again as the limp hand swung around, into the leg of the table. Holding the arm against his chest, he crawled from the table to the side of the shed, leaving a trail of blood.

John Winchester looked out from behind the engine block of the tractor he was using for cover, smelling smoke. The straw the lighter had landed in was aflame now, the fire greedily sucking at the air and dry plant matter, getting bigger by the second. He could smell the gasoline they'd poured over his son and his priorities changed instantly, drawing the long knife from the sheath at his belt and running doubled over for the chair.

"Dad?" Dean coughed, smelling the smoke in the shed, hearing the crackle of the flames as they worked through the straw, unable to see at all now.

"Yeah." John sliced downward and the ropes around Dean's chest fell free. He rammed the blade between the rope and the chair leg and yanked it back. "There's a big water tank outside, Dean. As soon as you're free, you get out there and get into it, alright?"

"I can't see."

John heard the fear in his son's voice, and felt his anger rise, clamping down on it savagely. "You're twenty paces from the door of the shed. The tank is another thirty paces past it, on the left. Shed's on fire."

Dean nodded, feeling the other ankle freed, his good hand lifting and wiping the gas from his face as the blade cut through the ropes. John pulled him out of the chair and spun him around, shoving him toward the door as he laid down a steady fusillade of cover fire in the direction he'd last seen Mike heading.

Dean stumbled out of the door, seeing the world change from a big dark blur to a big light blur. He started counting as he registered the change, bearing left.

* * *

><p>John looked around the left wall of the shed, at the empty forty four gallon drums lined up there, the rolls of wire netting, reels of barb. He heard a soft crash as Mike shifted incautiously against a length of timber and it fell.<p>

"Come on, John, you ain't gonna kill me in cold blood, are you?" Mike's voice came from the row of drums and John shifted his aim, seeing the top of the man's head moving slightly through the thick smoke that was filling the shed.

"No, I'm not going to kill you in cold blood," John agreed readily, the barrel of the .45 revolver tracking the man as he crawled behind the drums.

"I knew it." Mike peered cautiously out from behind the last barrel.

John's finger tightened on the trigger smoothly, and the bullet punched through the empty barrel and into Mike's leg. He screamed and fell out from behind the barrel onto the dirt.

"I'm just gonna make sure you can't out of here, and let you burn to death, you goddamned sonofabitch," John added conversationally as he walked up to him. He put a second bullet through the other leg and looked down at Mike's face, trying to keep the surge of dark satisfaction at the tears and sweat that coated it back behind his mental walls. If he enjoyed this too much, he'd be no better than the animal in front of him.

"I told you not to come after me, Mike. I told you to keep your nose clean and get your act together." He crouched down, reloading the revolver.

"You can't tell us what to do!" Mike snarled, a disbelieving anger breaking through the fear.

"Sure I can." John looked down at him. "You don't grab my son and try to burn him alive. Not and expect to get away with it."

He stood up, and saw Dean standing in the doorway, still dripping, this time with water. Even with the light behind, John could see the raw patches on his son's face and arms, where the gas had irritated the skin. The boy's eyes were swollen almost shut, red and bruised-looking.

The fire had spread to a pile of dry lumber at the back of the shed now, and the flames were roaring with a real voice. It was time to go.

"You're not a hunter, Mike. You're a sociopath. A monster. And I kill monsters."

He turned away, ignoring the screaming curses of the man lying on the ground behind him, and walked over to his son.

"Come on, better get you cleaned up."

Dean looked past him, into the inferno at the back of the shed, at the blurry outline of the man lying on the dirt to one side. Then he turned and helped his father pull the big sliding door shut.

* * *

><p>John pulled a blanket from behind the seat of the truck and wrapped it around Dean's shoulders, frowning a little as he saw the shivers that seemed to ripple continuously through him.<p>

"Get in. I've got some stuff to get the gas out of your eyes back at the room."

Dean climbed into the truck with a one-handed awkwardness and John looked over at him, his face hardening as he noticed the way the boy was cradling his hand against his chest. The shivering hadn't dissipated.

"Get it out, Dean. While it's still fresh."

Dean shook his head. "I'm alright. Just another near-miss, right?"

"No. This is the sort of thing you don't try and push off, son." John's frown deepened as he turned to face him. "You thinking about what nearly happened, or what I did to them?"

"I don't have a problem with what you did." Dean closed his eyes, tipping his head back to rest against the seat. "I should have been more aware. Shouldn't've let them get me."

In the driver's seat, John let out his breath. "This isn't your fault, Dean. I'm the one who brought this on."

He watched his son's face, the flickering expressions that flashed across it. "Dean?"

"They were going to go to get Sammy," Dean said, his voice very quiet. "Even if I told them where you were."

John realised why his oldest was shivering. He could face death for himself, could probably even face the death of his father. But not his little brother. Not Sammy. They'd both been kidding themselves that Sam was safe, away from them, out of the life. The recognition that he might not be had finally hit Dean.

"Sam's okay," he said, knowing it wasn't enough.

"Yeah. I know." The deep resignation in his voice said something different.

"I, uh, gotta go to Seattle," John said, turning back to the wheel and starting the truck's engine. "Got a lead on something over there. We could swing by, make sure he's, you know, okay."

He heard Dean's long exhale, and nodded to himself.

"Yeah, we could do that," Dean said softly.

He'd known, for some time now, that his oldest boy had taken every responsibility he'd been given as a matter of life and death. Had known that for Dean, keeping Sam alive was the only thing that mattered. He hoped that Sam knew that.

Turning the wheel, he drove out of the dirt yard, glancing at the rear-view mirror as the building behind them was completely engulfed in flame, the smoke reaching like a pillar into the sky.

He thought he might've been kidding himself, thinking he could protect them from everything, thinking he could train them well enough to protect themselves. They had grown up worse than military brats. Discipline. Rules. Hard training in everything he'd thought they'd needed. It wasn't enough. Not for the enemies he'd made, for what was hunting them, for the life he'd dragged them into.


	6. Chapter 6 Cape Girardeau, 2006

_**Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 2006**_

* * *

><p>Cassie stood by the river, watching the boats move slowly north and south along the broad stretch, the strong smells of the cannery cut by the scent of diesel as a boat filled her tanks at the dock.<p>

She wondered about the last four days, the chance to say sorry, the chance to be together again. Had it been predestined? She'd kept his number, through three changes of purses; taking it out, looking at it, putting into the new purse along with the photos and her cards. What did that tell her?

And he'd come. When she'd called for help, he'd come straight away.

Whatever had been between them, back in Ohio, was as strong now as it had been then, but nothing had changed. Dean was still committed to his job, she was still committed to her life. There was no room between those things for each other. She crossed her arms against the chill of the wind off the water and sighed.

Was there anything real there? The chemistry was real, there was no doubting that, but it didn't have anything to do with a relationship, with being able to share everything, with feeling free enough to be herself. She'd been in love, really in love, in the years since she'd seen him. Had been in love and had lost it and she knew that this, this thing between them, wasn't that. She wasn't sure it could ever become that, either.

He hadn't told her much, really, about his life. There were huge chunks that he skirted around, pretending not to hear questions about them, or changing the subject, or just distracting her with a kiss or caress whenever she got too near. She thought he wanted to tell her more, but for some reason just couldn't. The same way he thought there was something deeper between them, some connection that wasn't just biology.

He was a mass of contradictions, really. He cared about her, she knew that. He was deferential to her in ways that obviously surprised his brother, Sam, which had made her wonder about the other girlfriends that Sam had seen him with. Yet he clearly called the shots with Sam. He agreed readily to being open, to being honest, but persistently avoided any conversation about his past, except the past they shared. He'd said that telling her about himself, even the small amount he had, had been a first. It would explain why he thought … what he thought about them, she supposed.

When she'd watched his face, lying next to him in her bed, he looked … pensive. Going over things in his mind as if he were trying to make two and two equal five. He didn't look happy, didn't look contented for even a few minutes, but he would only talk vaguely around what he was obviously thinking about so hard. She should have told him, she thought now, told him that chemistry and wanting to be with someone didn't equate necessarily to loving someone, didn't mean that what they shared was permanent or real.

When they'd been together in Ohio, and even here, there were times when all she wanted was to be with him. To not let him out of her sight, beyond her physical reach. A part of that was the sex, she knew. But a part of it wasn't. That yearning to be closer was the beginnings of something else. The problem was it couldn't get any air, couldn't develop any further without time and he'd already told her he had to go.

* * *

><p>"Cassie."<p>

She turned her head at the deep voice behind her, and smiled at him, leaning back against his chest as his arms slid around her and his mouth pressed a soft kiss against the side of her neck.

"Car's parked on the other side," he said but he didn't move. She waited, knowing he wanted to say something else, was having difficulty in finding the words.

"I don't want to go," he murmured next to her ear. She nodded.

"But you have to."

She felt him pull away, slowly, reluctantly, and turned to look at him. He was looking down, that conflicted, pensive look back on his face. Two and two would never equal five, she wanted to tell him, but she didn't say anything.

After a moment, he turned and she turned with him, walking next to him, both of them watching the splintery grey timbers under their feet.

He had changed, quite a lot from the last time, she realised, glancing obliquely at him as they walked, from the corner of her eye. A lot of the fun in him had gone, or perhaps had just been overridden by his life. He was still decisive, still sure of himself. He was a little harder now. He hadn't talked about the intervening years much and her primary impression was that when he was with her, he wanted to only live in the present, no past, no future, just right now. She understood that desire but it meant that they couldn't go any further.

She felt the silence growing between them, a silence full of things that they both wanted to say but couldn't. What could you say when there was no time and no future?

As they rounded the corner of the building, they came off the wooden dock and onto the road and there was the car, shining black in the sunshine and Sam inside, waiting to get going. Subtle, she thought, ducking her head. He really was going.

"My mother said to say thanks again." She glanced at him. It was a long way from what she wanted to say but there was a pressure there now, that stopped her from talking about what was real.

He nodded absently, stopping as they came level with the car.

She looked at him, her chest tightening. "This is a better goodbye than last time."

Dean looked away, a half-smile tugging at the side of his mouth and disappearing. "Yeah, well, maybe this time it will be a little less permanent."

Looking up at him, his eyes narrowed against the brilliance of the sunlight on the water beside them, she realised that it wouldn't. Her throat closed up as she saw an inkling of that knowledge in his face. Whatever it was, those feelings that were between them, it wasn't enough. It would never be enough. The thought was painful enough to bite.

"You know what?" She smiled slightly, a reflex, not a feeling. "I'm a realist. I don't see much hope for us, Dean."

Swallowing hard against the tears that rose suddenly with those words, she saw the small flinch at them cross his face, his gaze staying on her as he fought against the knowledge she was sure he felt too.

"Well, I've seen stranger things happen." He looked down at her and Cassie saw his expression smooth out, a smile lift one side of his mouth. "A helluva lot stranger."

What did it mean when you could feel your heart breaking over something that you weren't sure had ever existed? She watched him struggle with the feelings that showed too clearly in the green depths of his eyes, and the sight hurt as much as what she had to say.

"Goodbye, Dean."

She didn't want to say it, not in that way, but it came out anyway. The truth, she thought much later, from somewhere deep inside of her.

"I'll see you, Cassie." It was a promise, to himself, maybe. She wondered if he knew that it was a promise he couldn't keep. "I will."

He meant it, she thought. He might or might not know that it was impossible, but he meant it. She nodded gently and stepped close to him. His arms slid around her and she kissed him softly, saying goodbye in that other way as well. Not a deep kiss, not a kiss to arouse desire, but a gentle and wanting kiss that wouldn't leave either of them with an ache, except for that ache in their hearts.

When she pulled back, she saw his vulnerability again. A longing for a different ending, and she saw that he knew that no matter how much he might want things to work out, they couldn't. It was there, in his eyes, finally. She watched him swallow it, watched that raw pain vanish from his face as he ran his hand lightly down her arm and stepped back.

In that moment, the very last of her hope disappeared as well. She hadn't even known she'd felt that hope until it was gone. The hope that he might choose his feelings over his duty. He got into the car and looked at her, fingers lifting slightly as Sam started the engine.

It wasn't until they'd pulled away that she realised he'd gotten what he needed. Resolution. Closure. She glanced back at the taillights of the black car, then turned away, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat.

She'd hurt him in Ohio. She'd known it at the time, too scared and angry to think about it then, and she'd seen it when he'd shown up, his gaze as greedy for her as hers had been for him, but a yawning chasm of wariness between them. He'd been carrying that wound around with him for a long time, and she wondered why he'd never been able to forget it, to let it go.

The same reason she'd kept his number? The same reason she knew that she would throw it out when she got back to her place? He'd meant his promise, about seeing her again, but it wouldn't happen. They'd finished their unfinished business, had looked on what had happened between them with perspectives that life had changed for them and now, she thought, they could both heal.

Looking out at the river, she rubbed her fingertips lightly over her temple, wondering if he would realise that.


	7. Chapter 7 Sioux Falls, 2007

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2007**_

* * *

><p>Bobby stared at Sam, filling up the doorway, smiling down at him. He felt his heart lurch awkwardly in his chest and he turned his head slowly to look at Dean, standing behind him, his gaze fixed to the wooden porch boards. Dread rose up through Bobby like a cold, black fire.<p>

"Hey, Bobby," Dean said to the floor at Bobby's feet.

"Hey, Bobby." Sam looked nervously at him, and Bobby pushed down at the feelings that were rising like a whirlwind inside of him, forcing himself to focus on the young man.

"Sam. It's good to see ... you up and around." He stood back, opening the door wider.

"Yeah, well ... thanks for patching me up." Sam walked past him into the house. Bobby's gaze returned to Dean.

"Don't mention it."

Dean kept his head down, eyes on the floor as he walked quickly past Bobby, for reasons Bobby knew all too well. He stopped behind his brother, glancing over his shoulder. "Well, Sam's better. And we're back in it now, so ... what d'you know?"

The shabby, comfortable living room was dim, even with the curtains opened and the lights on. Outside, the grey light was flat and thin and wasn't giving any more warmth than it did light.

Bobby followed them into the room, his teeth grinding slightly with the effort of keeping what he wanted to say and do back down under his control. Sam obviously had no idea, and Dean was pretending his ass off, and Bobby knew he'd have to get the elder Winchester alone before he could get the confirmation for his fear.

"Well, I found something. But I'm not sure what the hell it means." He looked at them, waving a hand in the direction of his desk.

Sam asked. "What is it?"

"Demonic omens...like a frickin' tidal wave. Cattle deaths. Lightning storms. They skyrocketed from out of nowhere. Here." He picked up the map that was lying on the desk, turning it around and unfolding it to show the western states. Wyoming was in the centre. His finger swirled over the bulk of the state, then tapped on the southern edge. "All around here, except for one place ... southern Wyoming."

"Wyoming?"

"Yeah. That one area's totally clean - spotless. It's almost as if ..."

Sam looked up from the map to the man when Bobby trailed off. "What?"

Bobby hesitated, the thought still too big for him to want to deal with, to accept. Demons in these numbers, acting together … that was way out of his experience. Hell wasn't that organised. "The demons are surrounding it."

"But you don't know why?" Dean asked.

Bobby looked at him, and realised this was a good opportunity. Never let a good opportunity go by, he thought. "No, and by this point my eyes are swimming."

He turned to Sam. "Sam, would you take a look at it? Maybe you could catch something I couldn't."

Sam frowned slightly. "Yeah, sure."

"C'mon, Dean." Bobby glanced over at Dean. "I got some more books in the truck. Help me lug 'em in."

He turned without waiting for him, heading for the yard door.

* * *

><p>It was two in the morning when he finally got to his bedroom, sinking down on the edge of the bed and staring at the wall. Ellen's arrival, and the information she'd brought had wiped everything else out and they'd spent the last few hours talking, planning, figuring out the best way to deal with the situation in Wyoming.<p>

Now, he could think again.

_Dean._

The boy had been eight years old when Bobby had met John Winchester, and they'd teamed up for a case in Idaho. Sam had been four, and Bobby had seen Dean's devotion to his little brother, the way he'd put himself between the trickster god they'd been hunting and the little boy.

For seven years, they'd been semi-regular visitors to his house, dropped off when John needed to leave them somewhere safe as he'd tracked the yellow-eyed demon around the country. Seven years, watching them grow up, teaching Dean about cars, teaching them both about hunting and tracking, taking care of them … being a father to them, if only for short periods. He'd heard about Dean's first kiss and Sam's first hundred percent on a test, he'd comforted them through nightmares and disappointments, celebrated with them in their successes.

He'd watched Dean failing to deal with his grief, when his father had sacrificed himself. Watched him trying to work on the car, to pour that pain and anger and fear into the metal and leather and rubber. He wouldn't talk about it, wouldn't show it to anyone, not even his brother.

Coming out of the house at a run when he'd heard the sounds of breaking glass and the shriek of metal on metal, Bobby remembered stopping dead in the shadows of the porch, his heart racing as he'd watched the young man demolish half of what he'd done on that car, one day when the pressure had gotten past what he could hold and it had spilled out, rage and pain and fear mixed together in a destructive blast. The fury, the way he'd seemed driven and lost, it had scared him, scared him for what being held inside of Dean, what was being locked up and never allowed out.

_Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way, something good could come out of it, you know? It's like my life could mean something._

How had Dean ever come to feel that way? He'd yelled at him, and he supposed that hadn't done much good, his stomach heaved slightly as he recalled the way the young man had flinched away from his words.

John may have put too much on them, when they were kids, especially onto his eldest, but Dean had so much to be proud of … hell, his father had been proud of him, even he knew that. Why hadn't that taken?

He looked down at his hands, twisted together on his lap. Even from a young age, Dean'd been sensitive, able to see the adult emotions and cross-currents in the conversations around him, able to pick up accurately how people were feeling, and often why. God knows, John had not been able to keep his more destructive emotions under lock and key all the time, and the boys must have seen a lot more than he had of the man's fear-driven anger and desperate pain over the years of living in close quarters. Had John lashed out at Dean?

_The way he lashed out at you, you mean?_ The voice in his head queried. That memory was still painful, as much for what he'd done wrong in the moment as for John's bitterly cruel response.

He tipped his head back, eyes closing as he thought about what that might have done to the boy who had tried so hard to bury his own personality and be more like his father.

_I couldn't let him die, Bobby._

The agony in that sentence had cut him down to the quick, and he'd understood the boy's feelings, he really had. For Dean, protecting Sam was the foundation stone in his life. It shouldn't have been, but it was. Dean had no more choice in the matter than he'd had picking the colour of his eyes.

He got up, leaving his boots by the door and padded down the stairs in his socks. Ellen was sleeping in the guest room, Sam had the boys' old bedroom in the upstairs corner. Dean had picked the long couch in the living room.

* * *

><p>The room was shadowed, barely lit by the fire that was dying on the hearth. Bobby walked over to the couch, unsurprised to see Dean's eyes open, his big frame hunched up and doubled-over at one end.<p>

He detoured to the desk and picked up the bottle that was a permanent fixture on it and two of the glasses they'd used earlier. The armchair sat kitty-corner to the couch, and Bobby dropped into it, setting the glasses along the arm and unscrewing the cheap bourbon's lid, pouring out a couple of fingers and passing one glass to Dean.

Dean accepted the glass and looked down into the amber depths, not meeting the older man's gaze.

"Dad told me to protect Sam," he said, his voice very soft and a little higher than usual. He sounded like the boy he'd been, Bobby thought, his heart contracting.

"I know." Bobby put the bottle on the floor beside him and picked up his glass, swallowing a mouthful of the raw whiskey. "He also said you might have to kill him, if the powers got too much for him."

Dean's head snapped up, his mouth parting slightly in surprise. Bobby shook his head at him.

"Me and John were close before he blew up, Dean," he said quietly. "John was driven by that demon, and he knew what was in store for Sam, for you, for himself."

He leaned forward a little in the chair. "Your dad was a strong man, Dean, stronger than most. But he made a lot of mistakes over the years, mostly with you."

He watched the young man shake his head and felt the corner of his mouth tug upwards, the smile half-resigned and utterly without humour.

"He did his best for us," Dean murmured, lifting his own glass and drinking quickly.

"Yeah. No argument." Bobby nodded. "But his best sometimes missed the mark. You protected Sam his whole life. But that ain't all you are, Dean. And you're not your dad."

Dean turned away, mouth twisting. "Doesn't leave much, Bobby."

"Leaves everything that's important, boy." Bobby reached out, gripping his forearm. "Leaves who you are. And what you want to be."

He saw expressions chase each other across the young man's expressive face, then saw them shut down, his eyelids dropping, that little shake preceding the duck of his head.

"Doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"

Bobby frowned, his fingers clenching around the thick glass as he struggled against the anger that surged up inside of him. He didn't know where it came from or why … it was partly an anger at John Winchester, partly at God, partly at himself, for not being able to do something earlier. "Matters more than ever."

"Sam's alive." Dean looked up at him, and he wasn't surprised, only saddened to see the shimmer over the green eyes that stared into his. "And I'm okay with that."

"I know you are. What I want to know is why?" Bobby stared back at him. He could still see the eight-year old, looking out from the depths of those eyes. "Why is your life so much less important than anyone else's, Dean?"

He watched as the young man dropped his gaze again, saw him swallow several times, and finally shake his head.

"Dean." He was pushing, he knew, and sometimes that wasn't a good idea with the kid, but he had to, this time. "Dean, why?"

"I wasn't supposed to be here, Bobby." His voice, usually deep, was higher, and strained. "If I'd died when I was supposed to, back in Nebraska, none of this would have happened. Dad would have been there to protect Sam. He wouldn't have failed."

Bobby watched as he lifted his head, his breath hitching as he fought against the sob in his chest, tipping it back and wiping impatiently at the tears that spilled over the lids. He dropped his gaze to his glass, giving the boy some time to regain the control that he tried so hard to keep.

There was a hard sniff and he looked up. The light from the table lamp caught the ripples in the amber whiskey in Dean's glass, the liquid agitated by the tremor that passed from young man's hand. He felt his throat close as he looked at him, seeing a mixture of pain and regret, guilt and doubt, filling the young man's eyes, contorting his features.

"Dad died for me, and all it did was make e-e-everything worse," Dean said, his voice breaking slightly.

"That's a load of crap." Bobby's fingers closed tightly around Dean's arm, biting in. "He knew that you were strong, strong enough to keep fighting the demon, to look after Sam –"

"And I _didn't_! I _wasn't_!" Dean pulled his arm free, sliding across the couch, away from him, his head ducking as his voice broke again, strained with anguish. "I lost him, Bobby. I didn't – I couldn't –"

"Son, that wasn't on you." Bobby heaved in a deep breath. _How in hell did the boy think he could've prevented any of that from happening?_ "Your know your dad couldn't have done any better –"

"No, I don't know that," Dean muttered softly. "I don't know that."

"Well, ya should," Bobby told him. "John wasn't Superman, Dean. No one could've stopped that demon from grabbing Sam – hell, you were the one who found him –"

"Too late."

"Dean –"

"I _will_ kill that yellow-eyed sonofabitch, Bobby. I will." Dean finished the whiskey in his glass, tossing it back in a single swallow, his face hardening, his eyes glittering suddenly with a cold, bleak fury.

"But I can't think about this – an' I can't talk about it. I can't do my job if I think about this."

The directive was clear.

Bobby let out his breath slowly. "Alright."

He watched the young man turn away, Dean's eyes closing, and he got to his feet. Another thing locked down, he thought, putting his glass down on the desk and turning for the door. Another wound that wasn't going to heal.

"Dean –?"

"Get some sleep, Bobby," Dean said, without opening his eyes or looking around, his voice low and defeated. "Long drive tomorrow."

"Right."

Walking out of the room, Bobby wondered how many wounds Dean could take, before he was nothing but scar tissue, unable to do anything but hunt down the things that lived in the dark. There was a streak, a vein, of caring in the young man, unlooked at, he thought, but there. It drove Dean. Lashed at him to do the right thing, no matter what the cost. It would be worn away by too much pain … by too many things that he thought were failures.

Sighing as he climbed the stairs, he wondered how to get that across to the eldest Winchester. Get it across before it was too late.


	8. Chapter 8 Point Judith, 2007

_**Point Judith, Massachusetts 2007**_

* * *

><p>"You get the stuff, we'll meet you at the cemetery." Dean looked at Sam, and his brother nodded.<p>

Bela looked at him, finding it hard to reconcile the decisive man she saw in front of her with the easy-to-goad eldest Winchester she was used to. Dean turned to her, gesturing abruptly at the door.

"Let's go."

She hurried out, walking around the front of the car and getting into the passenger seat as he slid into the driver's side, watching him from the corner of her eye. He started the engine, put the car in reverse and got them onto the street and heading west.

"You're a different person when you know what you're doing."

Dean kept his eyes on the road, ignoring the inherent barb. "Lucky for you."

"Yeah." She caught her lower lip between her teeth, recognising that he wasn't going to respond to her taunts, unsure of why she was still throwing them out. "I'm sorry. I get snarky when I'm anxious."

That did get her a swift sideways glance. "You're snarky all the time."

"You're an easy target."

"Doesn't mean you have to keep firing, you know."

She looked at him, seeing his mouth twist slightly. "I'm aware."

He drove fast, and handled the car as if it were an extension of his own body, his concentration focussed, yet his awareness of the conditions spread far out. She wondered absently if he'd wanted to be a racing driver, when he'd been a little boy, before hunting had consumed his life, his dreams.

They reached the cemetery and Dean pulled into the small lot, cutting the engine and staring into the darkness. As cloud drifted overhead, the full moon appeared, dappling the car and lot under the canopy of the trees, lighting the tombstones and statues in cold white light, outlined and emphasised by the deep black shadows.

She could see him struggling with something, sitting there beside her, his gaze on the scene painted in front of them. When he finally turned his head to look at her, she wasn't surprised. No matter what she'd done, no matter what she'd said to him, she knew that at his core, in the deepest part of him, he couldn't turn away, not when he'd been asked for help.

"How could you hurt your family?" The question was soft, uncertain.

A part of her was a little surprised at the bewilderment in his voice. He was a hunter, and he'd seen much of the worst that lived in the world. But he was still naïve, still innocent about the things that people did to each other, with no excuse of being turned or tainted.

"Not everyone has the same family, Dean." It was as close as she could come to telling him. It was closer than she'd ever gotten before, with anyone.

He chewed on the corner of his lip, brows drawn together a little. "They're still your family, Bela."

She turned away, feeling her heart thump hard against the base of her throat. She could feel his eyes on her, his doubt and mystification. Family, she knew, was unambiguous to Dean Winchester. Her dossier on him was several inches thick, the information gathered over the last couple of years making interesting reading. But family was his touchstone, the one thing he was absolutely clear on, that he would kill or die for without a second's hesitation.

She couldn't talk about hers. Or her past. Or her memories. She couldn't ever explain to him that people who were monsters also had families. He might have understood, she thought. He was one of a very few who had pushed a little at her, wanted to know why. But she couldn't let it out of the locked cell she kept it in, a cell without doors that kept her sane, most of the time. Not without a good reason, not without a reason that would override her reactions.

She heard him draw in a deep breath, his jacket whispering against the seat as he shifted his position, turning away, looking outside again, and she closed her eyes.

She was aware that she had been pushing at him since they'd met. Taking the rabbit's foot, taking his winnings from the luck that had brought him, shooting his brother even. Nothing she'd done had made him push back hard enough. Hard enough to break through, to make her fear him more than her past. He was, she thought, with a hint of derision, a good guy. And perhaps, in spite of his interest, in spite of the compassion that seemed to drive him sometimes, he was private in the same way she was, and couldn't bring himself to go that extra mile.

She wondered what it would take, to push him there. More than what she'd already done. Her time was running out. And his too. But she couldn't ask. She couldn't tell him, or anyone, without something to overcome the fear, something more frightening to help her face it.

If Sam's spell didn't work tonight, it would all be too late. She would hear the hounds coming for her soul the minute she drowned. Dean and Sam wouldn't. They wouldn't know about the deal, about the truth. She didn't know why that mattered to her, not now, but for some reason it did.

"What's the most frightening thing that ever happened to you?" She turned back to him, seeing him start slightly at the sudden question.

He glanced at her and away again, his answer coming reluctantly. "Losing my mom."

He didn't know why he'd told her, she thought, and she didn't know why either. There was something at play between them, some struggle, some connection that faltered and came and went without either of them knowing how or why.

"You lost everything that night, didn't you?" She didn't even know why she was asking. She knew his history, knew what had happened. Pushing at him. Prodding. Looking for the reaction that would – what? – save her? Save him?

He frowned, turning slowly to look at her. "How do you know about that?"

"People talk. It's not difficult to find out things if you've got time and money and patience," she said, careful to keep her tone casual. Like most negotiations, it was a subtle dance, one that she knew the steps to and he didn't.

"Why would you want to?"

She smiled slightly. "I find out everything about anyone I have dealings with, Dean. It's just habit."

The dark brows drew closer together. "We don't have 'dealings', Bela."

"Are you going to answer the question or quibble semantics, Dean?" She crossed her legs, watching him.

"I'll answer yours if you answer mine," he said, and she could see that it bothered him, both that he wanted an answer and that he was reaching out to her. He didn't know why either, she thought. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like. To just say it out loud. To tell someone and get the screams out of her head and into the real world. What would he do? Be sympathetic? Accuse her of lying? Either or both would leave her more vulnerable than she could stand, she thought, a fine tremor coursing through her. Her hands closed into fists to hide it.

"I can't." She looked down. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Right." Disbelief evident in his voice now. "I don't know why I even try to talk to you."

"There's a part of you that wants to believe that I can be saved, changed," she said.

The silence between grew, and she knew without having to look at him that she'd gotten that right, and she'd surprised him.

"Why would I care about saving you, Bela?"

His voice was very soft, and she looked over at him, meeting his eyes. "I don't know."

He looked away. She sighed softly. He was the right one, maybe the only one who would be able to break through, but he hid things from himself, didn't look at the things that made him uncomfortable, or try and work out why that was. The deal, or maybe the decision to make the deal, had changed something in the way he saw himself. She'd seen it in him, that odd lack of decisiveness when it came to anything that might go either way. Until tonight she hadn't seen what he must have been like before that moment, clear in his head about what had to be done, unafraid of doing it. She wondered if she'd met him before, if he'd have pushed harder when she pushed at him.

The thought was irrelevant and she dropped it. He was as he was.

"Life doesn't work out the way we expect it to, does it?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, his voice edged with suspicion again.

"Nothing." She shook her head. "I just mean, for a long time I tried to live without regrets, but now, I find I have a few."

"Didn't think you knew the meaning of the word." He looked at her, his expression shadowed. "Or remorse."

"That's right, Dean, I don't," she snapped at him, irritated with him again. It was irrational, that irritation. She'd never made it easy for him. For either of them. It wasn't her nature. She'd fought all her life to get what she needed. She couldn't hand out freebies. "What about you? Do you regret that your father made a deal and went to Hell so that you could live?"

He moved so fast that she didn't have time to get an arm up or do anything other than cower under him, staring into his eyes, a few inches from her own, his forearm pressed hard against her throat. She heard the harsh rasp of his breath in his throat.

"How the fuck do you know that, Bela?"

"The spirits talk, Dean. I know a lot about a lot of things." She dragged in a little air, fighting to get enough past the pressure of his grip. "You hunters don't even know how to get the information that you could use."

His eyes narrowed and she could see he wanted to throw that comment back at her, point out some moral high ground as if she didn't know what morality was. It was difficult to believe in morality when justice was never served and the innocent suffered more profoundly than their tormentors.

_Was this the moment?_ She could feel her heart racing in her chest, feel the adrenalin coursing through her body. If he pushed her now, would she finally be able to answer him?

She wanted to cry when she heard his breathing change, slow and soften, the pressure against her throat easing off as he moved away from her. _No, you were so close, so goddamned bloody close_, the thought was a like a scream inside of her.

"Why would you want to push me, Bela?" He stared at her warily, and she straightened up, applauding his suspicions even as she raged against his control.

"Some things need pushing to see the light of day, Dean." She rubbed her fingertips over the soreness on her neck. "Sometimes we all need a hard push, to get past whatever we're afraid of."

He frowned at her, clearly not understanding what she was talking about, or perhaps not wanting to. He was the only one who'd even come close and perhaps she'd been kidding herself all this time. Perhaps his deal had made him too afraid to push anyone.

"Never mind." She turned her head as the splash of headlights came down the road. "Your brother's here."

He glanced behind her, through the rear windows. "Let's get this over with."


	9. Chapter 9 South Bend, 2008

_**South Bend, Indiana, January 2008**_

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><p>She watched him from the shadows, standing in the parking lot. Saw him draw in a deep breath, and let it out, and knew what he was thinking. Fresh air. Free air. <em>You can't breathe in enough to last you for eternity<em>, she thought.

The lights flickered and went out, flickered again and came back on, he turned toward her and she knew he'd seen her, standing there. He walked toward her slowly, a little wary, a little puzzled, a lot confused.

"So the devil may care after all, is that what I'm supposed to believe?" He stopped on the concrete walkway, looking at her.

Dean Winchester.

She'd been watching them both for a while now. Dean was the key to Sam. And Sam was the key to Dean. And Dean would be a tough nut to crack. Unlike his younger brother, Dean had a wide streak of suspicion, running right through him. Trust had to be earned with him, it was never just given.

"I don't believe in the devil," Ruby said lightly.

"Wacky night." He walked down the steps toward her, and she could feel his paranoia, rising off him like fog off a river. "So let me get this straight, you were human once, you died, you went to Hell, you became a ..."

"Yeah."

She turned away and started walking, listening for him behind her.

"How long ago?"

She took another step and stopped, knowing that he was at least half-way hooked now. The thing with Dean was that under the growling, scowling exterior, there was another man. A man of unimaginable depths, who had no idea as to who he really was. He'd spent too many years trying to become someone else to know. He felt everything, and he felt it deeply. He saw things, connected things, sensed things but had no framework to set those insights to work. And he was afraid of what he could feel, when it didn't relate to getting the job done.

"Back when the plague was big."

Dean walked slowly toward her. She could hear the scrape of the asphalt under his boots, the rustle of his clothing, getting closer.

"So all of 'em, every damn demon, they were all human once?" he said it as if he were just checking the facts, but she knew he was stalling, for time, time to think about it, time to relate to it.

Ruby turned, softening her voice. "Every one I've ever met."

"Well, they sure don't act like it."

He didn't like talking to her, she knew. He didn't like demons, period. And he couldn't understand what had motivated her to save his life, not just this time either, but all the other times as well. And he really didn't like that, not knowing why she did what she did for them. The obvious explanation just wasn't flying to this man. It wasn't rational and it wasn't logical, and he wasn't either. She needed to meet him on an emotional level.

She looked up at him, knowing that this time, this moment, was the critical one. If she could get him to believe her, get him to – well, not trust her, because that was an impossibility for him – understand that she had goals that aligned with theirs, he would be her most important ally with Sam. "Most of them have forgotten what it means, or even that they were. That's what happens when you go to Hell, Dean. That's what Hell is. Forgetting what you were."

He looked away, and she could see that at least half of him believed, despite the rolled eyes, the derisive expression. For the first time, perhaps, he was letting himself think about it.

"Philosophy lesson from the demon, I'll pass, thanks." He retreated back into that smart-ass mode that had protected him to this point from the thoughts of things he didn't like.

"It's not philosophy. It's not a metaphor." She stared into his eyes, watching the words sink into him, watching him take it in. "There's a real fire in the pit, agonies you can't even imagine."

He was listening, when she was talking. The cocky attitude was still there. "No, I saw Hellraiser, I get the gist."

She turned away again, walking a few more steps. "Actually they got that pretty close, except for all the custom leather."

Behind her, he stood still and she walked a little further, then stopped, turning back to him. His face was no longer shuttered, everything hidden. She saw fear and as if he felt that, he looked up at her, the wariness immediately returning.

"The answer is yes by the way."

"I'm sorry?"

"Yes, the same thing will happen to you." She watched that cocky expression vanish, his eyes narrow. "It might take centuries, but sooner or later Hell will burn away your humanity. Every hellbound soul, every one, turns into something else." He was listening now, and thinking. "Turns you into us, so yeah – yeah, you can count on it."

Dean looked away, his mouth lifting at one corner, as he finally asked the question that he needed the answer to, and already knew. "There's no way of saving me from the pit, is there?"

Ruby looked at him. He still had hope, she saw. Not much hope but there was still a flicker left in him. He appreciated honesty, and he already feared the worst. It was a risk but a calculated one.

"No."

He nodded, and she watched the tiny hope disappear from him, his eyes cutting away as he walked toward her again. "Then why'd you tell Sam you could?"

"So he would talk to me. You Winchesters can be pretty bigoted. I needed something to help him get past the –"

"The demon thing?" His brows drew together, pushing the disappointment down, pushing it aside. She watched him do it. "It's pretty hard to get past."

She smiled, at the change in his voice, in his expression, the suspicion back. "Look at you." Big brother, she thought, protective, tough, trying to get intel for his brother. And underneath that, a spreading fear. "Trying to be all stoic. My god, it's heartbreaking."

Dean's gaze cut away, she could see the irritation at her words, the not-so-subtle patronisation bringing him back to the conversation, back to where she needed him to be.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I need your help," Ruby said quietly.

"Help with what?" he snapped at her. It was amazing, she thought, he could sense the trap, no matter how well hidden it was. The only way to blunt those instincts was to confuse them.

"With Sam."

He exhaled sharply, turning away and back to her, his expression cold and hard as his suspicions were confirmed.

She gave him a minute to think he had it all figured out, then she continued, "The way you stuck that demon tonight, it was pretty tough. Sam's almost there, but not quite, you need to help me get him ready." She paused, watching his eyes. "For life without you; to fight this war on his own."

And there it was. That realisation of what she was talking about. No big brother around to protect Sam. No one to watch his back. No one to turn to if the fight got too big for him. Alone.

Sometime, she thought, he would also think about the other side of that equation. Where he'd be. What that might be like. How it would feel. But for the moment, it was enough that he realised what life would be like for Sam. Without him.

She turned away, walking steadily away from him, leaving him to think it through.

"Ruby."

She stopped, her back to him and waited. He'd come to the right conclusion more quickly than she'd thought he would.

"Why do you want us to win?"

She turned back to him slowly. The next part was the hardest, harder than dropping the baited hook, harder than letting him play with it. He needed to have a reason to believe her. And it needed to be an emotional reason, one that he could feel, without having to think about it. He was a fascinating man, really. Contradictions piled on contradictions. He could be hard. But the man he didn't know, the one he'd repressed, was strong, rather than hard. And sensitive. And possessed of an extraordinary imagination. It would all work against him, when he went downstairs, she knew. It would tear him apart and they would drink his pain.

"Isn't it obvious?" She looked away, brows drawing together as if the realisations were new and immediate. "I'm not like them, I- I don't know why, I wish I was, but I'm not." She drew in a deep breath and looked back at him. "I remember what it's like."

"What what's like?"

"Being human."

She watched his face change, the compassion that was always there, even when he did his best to hide it, surfacing.

The difference for Dean between a monster and a human, it was a wide gap. Most monsters had started out human, but it was still a card that could work with him.

_As you are now, so once was I, as I am now so shall you be_. She'd been human. He would become a demon. She thought it was enough.


	10. Chapter 10 Pontiac, 2008

_**Pontiac, Illinois, September 2008**_

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><p>Castiel stood on the grass verge, staring at the red-roofed barn on the other side of the two-lane asphalt road. A summoning. For him.<p>

He sighed softly. Obedience to Heaven, to his Father, in all things, in all times. This was his assignment and he would see it through, as he had all the others, even when he'd been sure he would not survive them. Faith was a strange abstract. It gave as it took. And he was still alive.

He approached the doors, feeling the men inside, their fear and their doubts. He was, as yet, imperfectly enclosed by his vessel, and the energies that should have been dormant and quiescent inside the flesh and bone and nerves still escaped. Above him the loose sheets of the tin roof began to bang and lift, slamming against the rafters as that energy shot out in different directions. He felt for the bar that held the doors shut and watched it slide free, the doors transparent to his gaze.

In earlier, simpler times, he could have manifested as a light, or a fire. Mankind's ability to process the fantastical appeared to have shrunk as the millennia passed, however. And as he became aware of the seething emotions filling the men at the end of the building, he acknowledged that the human vessel was a less threatening visage in which to introduce himself.

* * *

><p>The nimbus of energy surrounding him overloaded each of the overhead lights as he passed under them, walking steadily forward. He could see them now, with his vessel's eyes, two men clutching at their puny weapons. He could hear their hearts accelerating in their chest cavities, their breathing rasping in and out of their lungs. He was aware of the shots that they fired at him, the small pieces of metal tearing up the fabric of his vessel's garments but disintegrating before they penetrated the inner layers.<p>

When they looked at each other, and dropped their guns, he thought they might have given up. It was a forlorn hope really. After two thousands of watching humankind, he should have realised that they weren't ready to give up just yet. Mankind had ever been tenacious. And optimistic.

"Who are you?" Dean Winchester circled around, and Castiel turned with him, his back to the other man.

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition." He looked at the man in front of him, seeing fear in his eyes. Why was he so afraid? He stood there, alive and in his body because of what had been done for him.

"Yeah. Thanks for that."

He pulled his arm back and the knife hissed through the air, ending its downward plunge in the angel's chest. Man and angel looked down at the knife hilt, incongruous against the waterproofed material of the coat, for a long moment.

Castiel raised his head and looked at Dean, his hand curling around the bone hilt and pulling the knife free, letting it go. He could, perhaps, understand the impulse. Fear was a powerful driver and he hadn't been able to establish contact with his charge until now.

Dean stared at him as the metal clanged on the concrete floor. He exchanged a brief glance with the other man, standing behind the angel. The older man swung the crowbar. Without turning to look, Castiel caught the end, turning and inexorably drawing the older man to him. He touched his forehead with his fingertips and the old man crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

"We need to talk, Dean," Castiel said quietly, glancing down at the still form on the floor briefly. "Alone."

He watched Dean as he walked warily around him, going to the other man. Turning away when he realised that the human was merely checking the state and health of the older man, he looked at the nearby table, noting the bowls and herbs they'd used to summon him. Cantrips and granny magic, he thought. Efficacious, but so primitive.

Crouching beside Bobby, his fingers resting on his neck, Dean turned his head and watched the angel, standing by the table, flicking through Bobby's journal incuriously, the air of someone waiting in a doctor's office and idly looking through a magazine so strong he had to forcibly shut it out.

"Your friend's alive." The tone left no doubt that it was only by the angel's mercy that was the case.

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"Castiel."

"Yeah, I figured that much," he said, a little sourly. "I mean – what are you?"

Castiel turned to look at him. "I am an angel of the Lord."

Dean was silent for a long moment, getting slowly to his feet as he looked at the angel. "Get the hell out of here. There's no such thing."

It might have been slightly funny, in other circumstances, the angel thought. Brought up as a hunter of the supernatural, tortured by demons, raised from Hell … and the man didn't believe in the powers of Heaven, only those of evil.

"This is your problem, Dean." Castiel stared into his eyes. "You have no faith."

Lightning coruscated through the open door, accompanied by a peal of thunder. The eyes of the human widened as the light filled the building and he saw the shadows behind the angel, the shadows of wings extending up and outwards, wings that spanned the width of the barn and lapped around the walls. The lightning died and the shadows disappeared.

Castiel watched Dean's bravado disappear for a moment, watched him accept, for the moment, the proof of his own eyes. He was surprised and disappointed to see that acceptance buried a moment later.

"Some angel you are." Dean's mouth twisted. "You burned out that poor woman's eyes."

Castiel bowed his head. The woman had persisted. It was unfortunate. "I warned her not to spy on my true form. It can be ... overwhelming to humans, and so can my real voice. But you already knew that."

"You mean the gas station and the motel." Dean remembered the intensity of the sound – not even a sound, really – that had drilled into his brain. "That was you talking?"

The angel nodded slightly. It had been disappointing to realise that the soul he'd saved, had drawn from the fires of Hell, had only been traumatised and injured by his attempts to speak to him.

"Buddy, next time, lower the volume," Dean advised.

Castiel dropped his gaze, acknowledging the error. "That was my mistake." He looked back to Dean. "Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong."

He thought it would reassure the man in front of him, calm him. Unfortunately it seemed to have the opposite effect. Castiel watched him drag back the shreds of his earlier confidence, his earlier anger. After Hell, this man's armour against what he didn't want to know was thinner. He couldn't hide himself so well. And that made him more afraid.

"And what visage are you in now, huh?" The words were almost spat out. "What, holy tax accountant?"

The angel sighed inwardly, looking down at the body he wore, his fingers rising to the lapels of the trenchcoat. Jimmy Novak's body, his soul nestled safely in the lattices of Castiel's mind. "This? This is... a vessel."

"You're possessing some poor bastard?" Dean stared at him incredulously.

Castiel made an effort to soften his expression. He could feel the man's unease, the choice of words showing all too clearly how close his thoughts of Hell were.

"He's a devout man," he told the human. "He actually prayed for this."

"Yeah? Well, I'm not buying what you're selling, so who are you really?"

Watching him, seeing the jaw muscles clench and twitch, the tension in his body increasing as the conversation continued, Castiel realised that his initial assessment of Dean's fear had been an underestimate. He didn't believe the man was afraid of him. Not physically, at least, but his fear of the unknown quantity that he represented was obvious. He couldn't imagine what the human thought he might be.

He looked at him, brows drawing together slightly. "I told you."

"Right." There was a world of sarcasm in the short word. "And why would an _angel_ rescue me from Hell?"

The angel saw that he was almost shaking now, confused, not knowing what to believe, not knowing what to think. Castiel walked to him slowly, attempting to project an ambient harmlessness as he wondered how he could get through to this man, who believed in demons, but not in their opposites.

"Good things do happen, Dean," he spoke gently, looking into his face.

The man was silent, and Castiel's attention sharpened on him, attempting to see the thoughts flowing through his mind. He watched as Dean's face tightened, hardening at some memory.

"Not in my experience."

"What's the matter?" For the first time, Castiel looked carefully at him. Under the taut repression of his feelings, edged about with a defensive anger, the angel could see doubt. Uncertainty. And fear.

There was so much pain in this man, he realised, recognising the dark shadows that lay behind the green eyes. So much shame. So much … self-hatred. He knew everything this soul had done, down in the pit. Winchester had been in agony when he'd raised him.

"You don't think you deserve to be saved."

Memory crowding the darkened eyes. A heart accelerating wildly in the chest. He watched Dean struggle for control over his feelings, over his thoughts. Was it just that he'd been in Hell, and the experience was still fresh in his mind, Castiel wondered? Or did it go deeper, to a lifetime of doubt? No soul could completely resist the effects of the Accursed plane.

"Why'd you do it?" The words came out fast, as if the man was barely holding himself back from screaming.

Castiel remembered the summoning, remembered the archangel standing beside him, and the gathering of the Host, and the dark and confusion and the stench of Hell.

"Because God commanded it." The angel's dark blue eyes bored into the man's, and again the muscles in Dean's face twitched and jumped, his fear palpable beyond the paper thin control he had over himself.

"Because we have work for you."

He watched fear turn to disbelief, and understood. A little more anyway. Torture and pain. The human imagination. This man's imagination. He wondered if Dean would ever be able to trust in anything again. If, to him, things would always get worse, never better. The man – the soul – standing before him had been waiting to hear that this was a reprieve, not an end to the torture. That he had some task he was needed for on earth, some Hell-related job, his imagination working with what he knew to produce scenarios of ever-lasting damnation.

Plainly, Castiel considered, he had never imagined that another power might require him. Watching Dean's face, seeing disbelief chased by doubt, the expressions flitting across lightning fast, the angel saw that inside, much deeper, there was denial. A powerful denial.

_Outcast. Unclean. Unworthy._

He knew what had been done to this man. And he knew what he had done to others. He was not one of those of his kind who believed that this soul was irredeemable. His Father had commanded this soul to be raised. That meant only one thing. The soul of Dean Winchester had remained pure.

Acceptance of what has been done. Contrition. Penance for the wrongs to restore the balance. These things were essential for forgiveness and redemption. From the moment he'd touched the soul, he'd seen that Winchester had moved through that process, driven, perhaps, by his conscience, by the inborn knowledge of right. He was, still, a righteous man.

But Dean had no faith, no belief in anything other than the strong moral code he'd been born with and the love for his family that had withstood everything he'd been through. Neither of those things were enough, Castiel saw. Not enough to convince that he had been forgiven. Had been … cleansed. What he'd done, in his eyes, had forever marked him. Had blackened his soul. Had damned him beyond the possibility of redemption.

It wasn't true. But he could see that it would take a lot more than words to convince this man of that.


	11. Chapter 11 Riverton, 2009

_**Riverton, Wyoming, March 2009**_

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><p>Alastair spat out the blood and water that filled his mouth, stretching back against the timber frame. His mind slid through the vessel's body, assessing the damage. It was minor, really. Not that Dean wasn't trying, the boy was doing his best and, he admitted, had come up with a couple of truly interesting twists on the standard practices. But …<p>

"You're just not getting deep enough." He looked down at Dean's face, hiding the satisfaction that bloomed as he saw the uncertainty in it. "Well, you lack the resources. Reality is just, I don't know, too concrete up here."

_And you don't know how to see the weaknesses here, Dean,_ he thought. The weaknesses that were all too apparent to him, looking at Dean in his body, that expressive face giving away all of the young man's secrets. And it was delicious, as piquant and tangy as a freshly slaughtered innocent, to torture the torturer and to see the cuts go deeper and further with every word.

"Honestly, Dean … you have no idea how bad it really was … and what you really did for us." He watched Dean pour salt into the long soft funnel of the piping bag, choosing his words carefully, aiming for those soft spots he could still see so clearly. Dean was afraid to be here, afraid to cut too deeply, lest he remember how much he enjoyed it, how addictive drawing the pain out was, how it had seduced him to greater darknesses. He was trying to hold onto himself, to keep that addiction down and inside. _Oh, my little grasshopper_, the demon thought with glee, _you won't get near me unless you open up that throttle, redline and go for it_. Of course, Alastair considered, the distance it would take … well, Dean would be a monster before he'd finished.

"Shut up."

He felt the change. Heard the thread of fear in the whispered words. The first real crack in Dean's armour. The nature of pain, he remembered telling Dean, down amidst the flame and blood, is fluid. For some it is a physical thing. But for others – and they were almost always the most interesting – it came from themselves, from their emotions, their lives, their endless wells of guilt and shame.

"The whole, bloody thing, Dean. The reason Lilith wanted you there in the first place –"

"Well, then I'll just make you shut up." Dean crossed the distance between them, and gripped Alastair's jaw, his fingers driving into the muscles and forcing the demon's mouth open.

"Lilith really –"

The salt poured down into his mouth, filling his throat, cascading into his organs. The piping bag was a nice touch, he thought, as he struggled against his vessel's asphyxiation, and shunted the crawling pain of the salt infusing its membranes far from his consciousness. Dean's imagination had always been up to the challenge of finding new ways to inflict agony. And the bonus had been that the more he'd immersed himself in the pain of others, the more pain he'd felt himself. Win-win, Alastair remembered with an inward smile.

As Dean pulled the bag away, he coughed up the salt and liquid and torn and bloody membranes of his throat, feeling it drip off his chin.

"Something caught in my throat." Another tearing hack brought up a second moistened mass of salt and flesh from deeper down. "I think it's my throat."

Dean leaned close to him, and Alastair could see that he knew that hadn't gone any deeper with the salt than anything else he'd tried. He repressed a smile at the frustration in his former pupil's eyes.

Dean simply couldn't see the fissures. He couldn't see the cracks up here. He couldn't get past the flesh and bone and blood. And here, on this plane of strict physical laws, all he could see was the vessel.

Inhaling deeply, the demon breathed in the fear and doubt emanating from the man. He would never get deep enough, he thought. Never see the fault lines that ran through everyone, from the most mighty angel to the lowliest demon, the pressure points about to give way that riddled mankind from the moment of the first sin. Dean understood shame. And guilt. He understood how those things had worked against himself. But he could not see them in others. No one could hate the man standing in front of him more than he hated himself. And the toughest barrier for Dean Winchester was his own humanity.

"Well, strap in, 'cause I'm just starting to have fun." The hunter turned away, walking back to the cart, and Alastair saw the lines of uncertainty in the set of his shoulders, in the carelessness of his actions as he slapped the bag down.

"You know, it was supposed to be your father," Alastair said, his tone brightly conversational, watching him pour more holy water into the cup, feeling that dark thrill coursing through him as he structured the next few minutes in his mind.

How it would feel to push this knife deep into Dean. How the man would feel when realisation hit … and everything he'd feared about himself turned out to be … true?

"He was supposed to bring it on. But, in the end, it was you."

The demon watched him dip the Kurdish knife into the cup, pouring salt over the wet metal. Dean didn't look up. "Bring what on?"

"Oh, every night, the same offer, remember?" Alastair tilted his head up, eyes half-closing as he drew out his pleasure in this moment. He let his gaze drop to the man, watching his shoulders tighten fractionally. "Same as your father."

Dean was fiddling with the knife again, and not even noticing that his so-called victim was standing upright, unbowed and unbroken, and not to put too fine a point on it, almost gleeful.

"And finally you said, _'Sign me up.'_ Oh, the first time you picked up my razor ..."

Alastair watched the memories return to Dean, knowing them as intimately as the man, remembering with his student. Pain was pain, whether it was your own or someone else's; it was like blood. You could drink your own or you could catch it in cups from the dripping pipes of another, but it all felt the same as it went down the hatch. He watched Dean's movements slow, his body still.

"The first time you sliced into that weeping bitch ..."

Watched as Dean turned to him finally, and he could look into his eyes, savouring this moment, tasting it, submerging himself in it. "That was the first seal."

It was perfect. He saw the ever-so-slight widening of Dean's eyes as the words sunk in, sunk deep. He saw Dean's control tighten, over his expression, over his thoughts, but too late. As always, too late. The acid was inside him now, eating its way down, through all the things that Dean still held to, through all the things that were keeping him sane.

Dean walked up to Alastair, his mouth twisting into a slight curve. "You're lying."

The demon stared into Dean's eyes. "And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break."

He allowed himself the smallest of smiles as he watched the face of the hunter, and drank the pain that seeped out past Dean's control. He saw that pain building as Dean turned abruptly away, walking back to the cart and stopping.

_Oh but there's more, Dean, there's so much more_, he thought. _So much more to rend apart your defences, to shatter your pathetic armour, to reach down inside, right down and rip out your heart._

"We had to break the first seal before any others. Only way to get the dominoes to fall, right? Topple the one at the front of the line."

Pain visible in the tension in that body. In the gradual tightening of the muscles of the shoulders and back and chest. In the heartbeat, increasing as shock started to shut off the nerve connections between muscle and brain. In the fine trembling he could perceive, rattling through Dean's frame as he struggled to contain what he was hearing, what he was feeling. _Pain_. And more pain.

"When we win," Alastair continued, his voice softening. "When we bring on the apocalypse and burn this earth down, we'll owe it all to you, Dean Winchester."

_And that, son, is how you torture someone_, Alastair thought, the frisson of pleasure trembling through his vessel, wiping out the physical pain, overriding everything. He couldn't see Dean's face anymore, but he didn't need to. He could feel the agony rolling through the man, and he knew Dean. Knew him inside and out. Knew that he could no more take the weight of what had just been dropped on him than he could fly.

He'd always had that sneaking suspicion that in his time in Hell, Dean had had a way to hold onto more than he was letting on. Keeping some part of himself secret and safe, away from what he forced himself to do every day. He couldn't criticise the relish the man had shown in his duties, but he'd sensed that it wasn't all of the man, wielding the razor and inflicting the torment.

He could see it more clearly up here, that part that hadn't gone untouched, by any means, but had remained somehow intact. He hadn't really carved Dean into a new animal, he realised. It didn't matter, not now, not to him. It might have mattered to Dean, but he wasn't going to tell him. Dean would torture himself for the rest of his life with the thought of what he'd done down in the fire and brimstone, the horror of what he thought he'd become. And that, in the end, was more than satisfactory.

"Believe me, son, I wouldn't lie about this. It's kind of a –" Alastair looked to his left, hearing a faint noise. From the pipe above, another drip grew full and fell. It hit the clean spot in the rim of the chalked circle, the broken edge of the trap. "– religious sort of thing with me."

"No. I don't think you are lying. But even if the demons do win," Dean looked down at the wickedly serrated blade in his hand, the knuckles standing out white as he tightened his hold. "You won't be there to see it."

He turned around. Alastair watched his eyes widen.

"You should talk to your plumber about the pipes."


	12. Chapter 12 River Pass, 2009

_**River Pass, Colorado, September 2009**_

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><p>Ellen ran up the stairs, cursing the fact that she'd left the pump action down there, that she had a knife and her .38 Special and that was it. She could hear the pounding of Dean's feet behind her, and she pushed herself harder, faster, not wanting him shot in the back because she'd been too goddamned slow.<p>

They shot out of the church, onto the bright sunlit street, and Ellen veered right, cutting across the lawn of a house three up, and over the yard fence, crossing two more yards before she found the place she remembered, the little weatherboard house with the rental notice on its gate.

Jogging around to the back door, she slowed and watched as Dean slid his jacket down over one arm, wrapping it around his forearm and hand before he smashed the small square pane above the door knob.

He took point and they worked the house, checking all the rooms, even the basement, before returning to the kitchen.

"Well, we know who War is." Dean shook the glass fragments in his jacket out, pulling it back on and sitting at the small table.

"Yeah but we can't take him by ourselves, not just you and me." Ellen looked through the cupboards, finding a couple of thick jelly glasses and taking them to the sink. She filled them with water and handed one to Dean. "And we have to tell Jo and Rufus, get Sam back."

"Not arguing." Dean drank the water down in a couple of swallows, wiping his mouth as he looked around. "Sound to you like War was getting bored with the status quo, wanted to get things moving again?"

"Sure did." She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. "The Horsemen, Dean. The Four Horsemen."

"Yeah. The party never stops." He got up to refill his glass, and Ellen opened her eyes, turning her head to watch him. Leaning against the edge of the sink, she saw his head bow, his shoulders hunch up a little.

"What happened to you, Dean?"

"Nothing." He turned off the tap, and turned around slowly, his gaze cutting away. "I'm fine."

At any other time, she might have taken the warning underlying the response seriously, might have backed off and left him to figure it out on his own. But not this time.

It had been almost two years since she'd seen him last, and she couldn't believe how much he'd changed, how much they'd both changed, him and Sam. He wouldn't have waited to get someone else's advice, wouldn't have needed anyone else's advice or wanted it back then. Something had gone out of him and she couldn't work out what it was. But he needed to get it figured out, because right now good leaders were thin on the ground, and she had to know if she could trust him.

"You figured out what was going on real fast, once you had the kick in the ass to get you going. Since when have you doubted your own ability to work out a course of action, Dean?"

He looked away, mouth twisting slightly and she saw the defensiveness rise in him, then fall away, as if he couldn't be bothered pretending any longer. "A lot happened, since we saw you the last time, Ellen."

"Yeah, I get that." Ellen saw the nervousness in him, the first time she'd seen that, aside from the ride back from Chicago. But that had been different.

"Bobby told me a little," she continued cautiously. Singer had tried to be circumspect about what he'd said, but all the pieces were interconnected and she had contacts with people who'd needed to know about the devil as well. She'd told them some things, not how it'd started. Most of the hunters she knew would find out anyway, she thought. Demons talked.

He looked down, licking his lips. "Well, he shouldn't have."

"You made it back, Dean."

His mouth lifted at one corner, humourlessly as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. "No one makes it back, Ellen."

Whatever had happened to him, it had taken his confidence and it had taken his recklessness, but it hadn't taken the core of him, she thought. Watching him earlier, in the church, seeing his need to find Sam, to get him out, overruled by the responsibility he'd taken on for the people in that room, the people who were depending on him to get them out of the town safely, that had been clear.

The silence between them grew longer and louder and she thought he wasn't going to talk at all, then he lifted his head and looked at her.

"I-I've made a lot of crap decisions lately, Ellen." He picked up the full glass and drank a little, carrying it back to the table and dropping into a chair. "I don't … I'm not …"

He looked down at the top of the table, a scratched and cheap laminate top in a faded pattern that might have been supposed to resemble marble. She saw the muscle at the point of his jaw flex, some memory shadowing his eyes.

In the afternoon light, shining through the small and dirty window, the kitchen seemed warm and peaceful. A trick of the mind, Ellen thought, considering what was going on outside.

And, she added mentally, there was nothing peaceful in the man who sat across the table from her. He looked like someone with the weight of the world on his shoulders, a weight that had teeth, not just bowing him down, but eating him from the inside. It wasn't really tiredness that had left the bruised-looking smudges around his eyes, although he looked tired. It went deeper, she thought, a loss of something that had been a cornerstone to him.

"What happened between you and Sam?" she asked softly. He glanced at her and away, that slight lift of the corner of his mouth there again before vanishing.

"Sam made a choice." His face spasmed slightly, something there then gone. He drew in a breath, looking away as he shrugged. "It – we both had to live with it."

Watching the way he was struggling to keep it all inside, she realised that whatever that choice had been, that was what had done it – or at least, it was a big part of it.

He lifted his head, meeting her eyes briefly then looking away again, his fingers rubbing over his forehead slowly.

"I-I don't think … I don't know how to trust him now," he said, and made a small noise, somewhere between a snort and a cough, not really either. "I don't know how to trust anyone anymore."

Ellen held her breath. It was the most he'd ever shown her. She wondered if it was the most he'd ever let out to anyone. She saw his eyes lose focus, his attention turning inward, withdrawing into the memories that seemed to be scourging him.

There was a part of her that wanted to smack him upside the head, bring him back, tell him to leave the past in the past and get on with what was going on right now, but she kept that part tightly in check. It wouldn't help, wouldn't do anything but encourage him to bury whatever had happened to him even further. Not looking at things, pretending that they hadn't happened, wasn't a good long term strategy for people in their life. Sooner or later those things would rise up and he'd be forced to deal with them, and they would be distorted by that time, distorted and festering and poisonous.

Turning to look back at the smeary window, she let out a soft sigh. She and Jo had stayed with Bobby for a few months after Wyoming, before they'd found their own place again. Near the end of that time, Bobby had shown her Jim Murphy's journal, and in it had been a revelation that had almost destroyed her, but had, in the end, saved her. She still felt regret for all the years that she'd shut out John Winchester, believing what he'd told her, believing that her life had been shattered by him. It wasn't until the poison of that belief had finally been drained that she'd realised how much it had shaped her over the years.

She didn't want to see his son shaped by the poisons of what had happened to him, all the things he might be believing about himself, not if she could stop it. She owed that to John.

"You're a good hunter, Dean," she said slowly. "I've watched you, seen you think through things before you barrel in."

He looked at her, his eyes refocussing, his face losing that inward expression. "But?"

"But you're second-guessing yourself." She leaned her chin on her elbow. "It's not just Sam you don't trust. You don't trust yourself."

As he turned away, she saw his throat working. "No."

He was a good man. That was something she'd always known about him. Not a safe man. Not a man that would be safe for her daughter. But a good man. He was John's son. In that moment, however, she saw that he'd never believe that. Something had stripped that out of him, not who he was, she realised, but how he saw himself.

"You got a bad deal? We all got bad deals, hon." She leaned back in her chair, wondering if he would listen to her. Pain hardened, she'd read somewhere. And great pain hardened greatly. It was a lesson she'd learned young. "We've all made stupid mistakes and lost people and done things we wished we hadn't."

She saw a flash of anger in his eyes, his gaze snapping back to her, and thought he was going to throw it out at her, what had happened, why it was worse for him, but at the last second, he closed his mouth, glowering at her instead.

She smiled humourlessly at the reaction. "What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what it was, Dean. The only thing that matters is that you understand what it did. What it did to you."

He looked around the room restlessly. Again she had the impression that he wanted to say something, but that he couldn't. He looked back at her.

"What's the worst thing you've done, Ellen?" he asked her, the words edged with a very faint contempt, as if he couldn't imagine anything too bad. She met his gaze with all the steadiness she could muster. It was still a wound, older now, thick with scar tissue. Still sensitive.

"Worst thing I did was believe your dad's story about what happened to my Bill," she told him bluntly, forcing it out. There had been too many lies, too many misconceptions. "Believed it and trashed our friendship, and poisoned myself with it for fourteen years."

He stared at her.

"I knew Bill'd had a fling. A few years before. That man couldn't keep a secret like that, everything showed on his face." She looked down into her glass, hands curling around it, her lips twisting slightly. The memory was bitter-sweet. "Didn't know there was a child from it, but I could have lived with that, better than living without him."

She raised her head. "Bill made John promise not to tell me what really happened. And your dad kept his promise, put the blame on himself, knowing he would probably lose us as well as Bill from it."

When John had brought back Bill's body, she'd been broken, she remembered. In many ways, the ways that'd counted, he'd been the centre of her life. Big and easy-going, his strengths had countered her weaknesses, and hers had been the counter to his. And they'd made something, something between them, that was irreplaceable. John had kept his promise and her first reaction had been rage. Even now, her memories of that intense fury at him were still vivid. She had, she knew, been looking for someone to blame and he'd stepped in, offering himself.

"Bobby had Pastor Jim's journals," she said, with a small shrug. "Your daddy told Jim what happened and Jim'd written it all down. When I read it …"

When she'd read it, her world had collapsed and black had been white and up had been down and everything she'd told herself, everything she'd thought, had exploded in her face.

"It took me a long time to figure out how much I changed from believing that." She looked out the window, a faint shiver rilling down her spine. "Partly because I was too busy worrying about Jo to take the time to work it out, partly because I was too afraid to see how much damage had been done, too afraid to face up to it."

For a long time, all she'd been able to think of was the wasted years. When she'd finally managed to get past her shame at that waste, she'd realised just how much of herself she'd lost that day. Not only from Bill's loss, but from the way she'd hardened, the way she'd tried to stop herself caring.

Her attention sharpened as she noticed the sun's position through the grubby glass. "We should head out soon."

He nodded slowly. "You couldn't have known, Ellen, not if Dad lied about it."

"No," she agreed readily, looking back at him. "But when I did find out, it would have been a helluva lot better if I'd made the time to get it sorted, instead of pretending it would somehow sort itself."

His gaze dropped to the tabletop, and she watched him thinking that over.

Whatever had happened, to him when Sam had been killed, and between him and Sam, if he could get it clear now, not just bury it with the rest, he stood a chance of regaining himself. She thought he might, if they made it through this, and no new threat appeared too quickly. Not the odds of that were good. The countdown to the end had already begun.

Getting to her feet, Ellen leaned on the edge of the table. "We need you, Dean. What's coming … what's here now … there's no room for doubts, or might've-beens."

He ducked his head, away from her gaze.

She'd asked Bobby about the boys, after she'd read the journal.

"_John was driven_," he'd told her, a little unwillingly. "_And he was desperate. But he put a load on that boy, Ellen. A load too heavy and too early and Dean's never gotten out from under it_."

"_The load's the load, Bobby_," she'd said. "_He's carrying it_."

"_Yeah_," Bobby'd growled back at her. "_An' it's killing him_."

Looking at the tension in him now, she wondered if the old man'd been right.


	13. Chapter 13 Lawrence, 2010

_**Lawrence, Kansas, May 2010**_

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><p>The rumble of the engine caught his attention, and Michael's, the two of them turning in unison to see the black car come up over the hill, music blaring from the open window, the leather-clad arm protruding insouciantly from the door.<p>

_Dean._

Goddamned single-track, co-dependent, whining, endlessly resurrected, moronic brother of his vessel. He'd seen terriers who were less obsessed. He'd seen obsessive-compulsives who were less obsessed than this man.

He'd tried to keep Sam happy. Tried to ignore the insults and the smart-ass comments and the outright rudeness, his patience wearing thinner and thinner as time went by. He felt the sharp thrust of hope from the soul bound within the vessel, as the man got out of the car, leaning on the roof and door, and looked from him to Michael and back again.

"Howdy, boys." Dean's eyes narrowed against the flat glare. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

He shut the car door and walked toward them. "Hey, we need to talk."

Lucifer looked at Michael, seeing his brother's anger in the tight expression on his vessel's face. The sight somehow ignited his own rage, barely held in all this time.

"Dean." Lucifer looked out of Sam's eyes at his vessel's brother. Sam's brother. Sam's soon-to-be-dead brother. "Even for you, this is a whole new mountain of stupid."

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Sam."

The archangel felt himself glowing at the insolence. The monkey had upped the ante and sorry, Sammy, but your brother is going to pay for everything, over three thousand years of pent-up rage had to get a release somehow. He could feel Sam beating weakly against his control and he smiled. Sam had believed he was strong enough to take him, to hold him in a fight for possession. But the nature of consent, given freely and without doubt, had meant that he'd never stood a chance.

* * *

><p>"Hey! Assbutt!"<p>

He watched in disbelief as Michael exploded into flame and disappeared, turning slowly to face the angel who'd thrown the bottle.

"Castiel. Did you just molotov my brother with holy fire?" It was getting harder and harder to maintain a calm façade. No low-ranked seraphim would have even dreamt of attacking an arch in the old days. It was, perhaps, time to remind them of that.

"Uh ..." The angel backed away, hands rising appeasingly. "No."

"No one dicks with Michael but me," Lucifer said softly, snapping his fingers. Blood, flesh, bone, pulverised and shredded, burst outward in a cloud of red, coating the other human who'd come with the seraphim.

"Sammy, can you hear me?" Dean took two steps toward him, and he turned back, eyes narrowing at the aggravating insolence of this man. Inside the vessel, locked deep down, Sam was frantic, hammering the walls that held him, desperate, silently screaming.

"You know ... I tried to be nice ... for Sammy's sake. But you –" Lucifer's hands reached out, closing and tightening on the lapels of the leather jacket, "– were such a pain ... in my ass." He lifted Dean and threw him over the hood of the black car, into the windshield.

The gunshot was loud in the quiet field, hitting him high in the back of the shoulder with the first shot. Lucifer turned slowly, looking at the human behind him, as the second shot ploughed into his chest. He looked down at the wound, the round black hole through the jacket running with Sam's blood. He lifted his hand and snapped his wrist in a semi-circle and the human's head spun, the sound of the break in the spine almost as distinct as the shots had been.

"No!" Dean's anguished shout from the hood brought his attention back to what he'd been doing. He strode to the car, gripping the man's ankles and yanking him down the smooth, black metal.

"Yes."

The first blow felt liberating, drawing first blood, the sting in his hand sending a frisson of anticipation through him. He waited for Dean to straighten up, to turn back to him, waited for him to beg and plead for his life.

"Sammy? Are you in there?" Dean's voice was low and gentle, but insistent.

One – _small_ – part of him had to admire Dean's bravado. He could see the fear, held down by force of will, just below the surface of all that determination, but he just kept on, ignoring the warnings and the threats, ignoring common sense and apparently, all of his survival instincts, getting into his face and not even noticing that he was going to be in a world of hurt very soon, that he was going to be drowning in his own bodily fluids.

"Oh, he's in here, all right." Lucifer slammed his fist into the side of Dean's face, feeling the skin over Sam's knuckles split as bone hit bone.

"And he's going to feel the snap of your bones." He pulled Dean upright again, his fist smashing into the cheekbone and eye socket, sending Sam's incredibly annoying brother spinning to the ground beside the car.

"Every single one." He reached down and dragged the man back to his feet, pushing him against the side of the car. "We're going to take our time."

So good to just to let this anger out, to have a punching bag so worthy of his effort. Sam was allowed to see it all, just to make sure that he knew where the line was drawn. Dean was no longer a threat, not in any sense of the word, but this, this was satisfying … justice for all the time wasted, for the Horsemen lost, for his plans thwarted … he would take it all out in trade.

The only sounds in the dead, bare field were the sounds of bone against flesh, bone against bone, the grunts of pain and impact from his victim, the wet squelch of skin splitting and the soft patter of the drops of blood as they sprayed over the shiny black paint and glass.

He stopped, for a moment, gripping the collar of the jacket to lift the man higher against the glass, bring him into prime target range.

"Sam, s'okay. S'okay. I'm here. I'm here. I'm not going to leave you." Dean opened the eye that wasn't swollen shut, staring into his eyes through bloody lashes, pushing the words out through cut and bleeding lips.

_Unbelievable_. Lucifer looked down at him. Barely conscious and he was still trying to get through to his brother. What was that? A lack of intelligence? Disinterest in his own survival? He'd sensed, more than once in their encounters, that Dean was ready to die, would sacrifice himself willingly if that was what was needed. It didn't seem like that now, exactly. Something was driving him, something powerful enough to keep him focussed through the pain and disorientation and confusion that must be filling him, his brain slopping around in his skull after all those blows.

Love? The thought intruded tentatively, prompted as much by the frenzied shrieking of the soul he held prisoner, as by the sight of the man in front of him, dying from his injuries, but not acknowledging it, not yet.

_Michael's voice, resounding through the chambers of Heaven. "Bow down before the likeness and the image of the divinity." And in that face was love, the love of his Father, the love that shone through the flesh and bone and blood, the love that made up the soul, the soul that no angel possessed. This was love? This inability to stop trying? The half-blind persistence of this weak, dying creature in front of him?_

Lucifer's fist curled tight and smashed into Dean's temple, then into the jaw again.

"M'not goin' to leave you."

And still Sam's brother kept talking. Lucifer drew back his arm, his fist tightening again. Last time pays for all, he thought, fury filling his veins, crackling along Sam's nerves. _Say bye-bye, Sammy, your brother might go to Heaven, might be forgiven and sanctified and given Paradise, but you will never see him again_.

He shifted slightly, to get the right angle to crack the skull open, and the reflection hit him precisely in the eye, a glint off the corner of the windshield trim, a spear driving into his brain. And he was held by it. And through it, his brain – Sam's brain – registered the sight of a small green army soldier, stuffed into the ashtray of the rear door armrest.

Lucifer felt the vessel fill … with memories, with emotions, threaded through by a single unbroken warp. A lifetime of memories, of love, of unity, of loyalty, of courage and that persistence, that determination that kept them getting up, time after time, no matter how badly they'd been beaten. Sam's memories, of his family, of his brother, of everything they had been through, and everything they had survived. Together. And the thread that joined and interlinked every single memory got stronger and brighter, winding its way around the angel, tightening around him, binding him, dragging him down. He fought against it, expending all of his power, reaching for the souls of Hell only to find that what wrapped around him cut him off from those, blanketed him in a burning white light that was shrouding him, suffocating him.

_What makes the human soul, Michael had asked him, when he'd rebelled. What makes them different to us? He'd shaken his head, unable to answer. Michael had looked at him, his expression filled with sorrow. It's love, my brother. Our Father gave them his love, and it fills them. They can love each other, as we cannot. They are strengthened by it, armoured by it, undefeatable with it. Do you not understand?_

_He never had. Had never wanted to._

_NO!_

He screamed at Sam, seeing his prison dissolve, seeing Sam's soul stride free, immersed in the memories that kept coming, getting thicker and stronger as they became more recent … Dean's sacrifice, his resurrection, his fear and pain and doubt and despair, his courage and vehemence and obstinate refusal to lie down and die, even when he wanted to … the flood of memories wrapped around the angel and bound him, cutting off his senses, cutting him out of the vessel's consciousness.

* * *

><p>Inside, in a prison made of love and memories, Lucifer flailed and shrieked, enraged by the walls that were impervious to his power. Gradually, that rage faded away as nothing he did worked. Slowly, rationality returned. Sam would jump into the hole, and return them both to his cage. Once there, his vessel would find out that Hell had a way of stripping the memories from the damned, stripping memory and feeling and leaving only pain and hatred and fury. And once the memories were gone, he would be free again.<p>

He should have realised the danger that Dean Winchester represented. Should have remembered what Michael had told him, he thought, withdrawing into himself. It had looked like a weakness but it wasn't. He would take that into account when he made it out the next time.


	14. Chapter 14 Battle Creek, 2010

_**Battle Creek, Michigan, July 2010**_

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><p>Lisa peered at the glass she held, twisting it this way and that to check that it was actually clean. The new kitchen was small and dark, needing lights on all the time just to see what she was doing. She let out a soft exhale as she rubbed the glass a little harder with the dishcloth.<p>

Why hadn't she noticed that when they'd looked at the place? _Because Dean's only concern had been that he could protect it, that it didn't have the big picture windows and sliding doors that made them vulnerable_. She gave the glass a final wipe and put it away, looking up as Dean walked in.

"Hey."

Bright smile, because it didn't really matter where they lived. So long as he was in her life, in whatever capacity he could be. This last year … she hadn't lied to him, back at the old man's place. It had been the best year of her life, despite the difficulties. From the moment she'd met him, eighteen years old and doing her best to shock the hell out of her parents and prove … something to herself, she couldn't remember what now … he'd had a hold on her that had somehow never really died.

"Hey. Where's Ben?"

"Bike ride." She watched him walk past the counter, his eyes going straight to the windows, looking out to the street, his expression … more than concerned, she thought, more like worried. "What?"

His head bowed and he turned slowly back to the counter, leaning against it, and now there was more than worry on his face. He looked uncertain, and … a little desperate, she thought.

"I don't know what to do here, Lis. I mean, if I knew for sure what the safest thing was, then I'd do it. I'd stay here and look after you guys …," he looked down, shaking his head slightly, his voice getting softer as the next words came out, "or get as far away as I possibly can, but I don't know."

He lifted his head, his eyes meeting hers. She could feel that. God, she could see it. When they'd met, his cocky, bring-it-on decisiveness had been one of the most attractive things about him. He'd never looked uncertain, back then. Now, it seemed more and more, he was being pushed and pulled from multiple directions, and it was spinning him around, confusing him, worrying him.

"And I get what I've been doing lately, you know, what with the yelling," he continued with a grimace, rubbing his forehead tiredly, "and the acting like a prison guard. It's just, that's not me."

No, she knew that was true too. Until he'd hustled her and Ben out of the house and into the car and driven them to another state, telling her nothing but that they were in danger, he'd been patient. Even when he'd first turned up, and those first few weeks, living with his grief and pain, he'd tried hard to not take it out on them.

"You tell yourself you're not going to be something, you know?"

She looked into his eyes as he continued, feeling his pain, feeling that insecurity, but not sure what she could say or do. He was scared that something, from his past, would come after them. She didn't even know what that meant, not really. He hadn't really told her about his past.

_You didn't really ask much, did you?_ She squashed that voice. Some of the things he had told her, some of the things she'd seen for herself, when he'd turned up at Ben's party, well, her curiosity had shrivelled up and she'd found herself not really wanting to know much more.

"But my dad was exactly like this. All the time," he said, his face screwing up as he pushed some thought or memory away, his eyes closing. "It's scaring the hell out of me."

It was another thing she didn't understand. He'd been a great father to Ben, taking time to spend with her son, always relaxed and patient with him, supportive and disciplined without ever being harsh. It was why his behaviour over the last couple of weeks was so strange, so unsettling to both of them. This was the first time he'd even mentioned his father.

_Guess what! He had a whole life before he met you!_ That voice, the one she didn't want to hear, piped up again. _A life that you know nothing about!_

"Dean." Lisa walked around the end of the counter, looking at him as she banished that voice again.

She'd spent the last two days thinking about this, while he'd been gone, relishing the peace and routine in the house, and aware that it was there because he was not. It was breaking her heart. Her dreams, her hopes of what the future might have brought were shattered, because once Sam came back, he wasn't hers anymore, he wasn't the Dean she'd gotten to know over the last year. He belonged to his old life again.

"Can I be honest?" She waited for him to listen, to shake off the past and come back to the present. "Maybe we're safer with you here, maybe gone. I don't know. The one thing that I do know is that you're not a construction worker. You're a hunter. And now you know your brother's out there, things are different."

He turned to her, his expression vulnerable in a way that she'd hardly ever seen in him, and she could see that he already knew what was coming, that he was bracing himself for what he thought she was going to say.

"You don't want to be here, Dean."

"Yes, I do," he countered immediately, the complete certainty in his voice lighting up a small hope that one day he might choose them, choose to stay with them over Sam, over the life that brought him pain and misery, choose … her.

She couldn't ask him about that now, she knew. He was too unsure of what was going on, too torn between what she thought he saw as his responsibilities. It would only derail the rest of the conversation she needed to have.

"Okay," she agreed, nodding. "Okay, but you also want to be there."

His gaze cut away from her, and this time he didn't say anything, didn't deny it and she felt her stomach turn over. She didn't know how to ask him about that life, she realised, and she couldn't tell, didn't know him well enough to be able to tell if he would ever quit. Maybe, if they had enough time, had a way to deal with his life, they could work something out. Maybe. If the monsters – the past – he feared didn't kill him first, if he didn't decide that they would be safer away from him.

"I get it," she said quietly, her chest constricting a little at the conflict she was watching. Wanting to stay. Wanting to go. Needing both and unable, really, to have either. She looked down, trying to find the right way, the right words to get them through it. "You're white-knuckling it living like this. Like … like what you are is some bad, awful thing. But you're not."

She hadn't understood it, not really, the way he felt about himself. For most of the year just gone, he'd been careful to keep it hidden, along with his past, and it only came out occasionally, sometimes on the tail end of a nightmare, sometimes in a reaction. Most of the time, she wasn't sure what she'd seen. Guilt maybe? Or shame? She didn't understand what he was feeling and, she admitted to herself, on those occasions, she'd been too afraid to ask. Afraid he'd turn away. Afraid he might leave if she demanded too much of him. She'd watched in silence. Not asking.

So, every time he'd lost control, revealed something of that internal struggle, his face would close up, and he would turn away, and fight to shove it down again, and not let her see him until it was gone. They'd never talked about it; it was one of the many subjects they didn't discuss. But she knew he was scared. Scared of something that had been a part of his past, something he drank to blot out, to keep away from them.

Those first couple of months, after he'd shown up, they'd been hard. Hard for her, but harder for him, she'd thought. He'd spent most of the time locked in grief, or frustrated and angry, and she'd finally had to tell him that it wasn't working, he wasn't trying. He'd changed, almost overnight, after that conversation. And they'd had their ups and downs over the year, more ups than downs, she thought. He'd told her a little … just a sketch, really, of what had happened. Enough for her to realise what he wasn't saying, enough for her to realise that inside of him was a depth of pain she would probably never see, because he would never let her see it. She'd thought that, in time, he would be able to face it, face his memories, and share them with her. But they ran out of time, when Sam came back.

She was happy that Sam was alive. Because so much of Dean's anguish had gone with that knowledge. But, it had stopped them, their relationship, cold. Now, he had someone else to talk to. Now, he had other things to do. She didn't know if what he'd felt, how he'd been with her and Ben was real enough – _was _important_ enough to him_ – to overcome that old life, but she was pretty sure he couldn't keep living like this, wound up so tight he couldn't think clearly, could only react, uncertain and worried about everything.

They needed to work this out another way. And she needed to know, once and for all, what he felt about them. She wasn't a shrink, she didn't know how to find her way through his thoughts or deal with his pain, she hadn't even finished high school, for god's sake, but she thought they had something and she was willing to fight for that.

"But I'm not going to have this discussion every time you leave. And this is – this is just going to keep happening. So," She took a deep breath, looking up at him, "I need you to go."

She watched that hit him, saw his throat working as his gaze dropped to the counter to hide his reaction, then slowly lifted again to meet hers, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. "I can't just lose you and Ben."

Lisa shook her head. "That's not what I'm saying."

"You're saying, hit the road."

For a moment, his feelings were all there, and she felt a split-second of something, something hard and liberating and a little triumphant. She didn't want to look at that feeling too hard, because maybe it would tell her something about herself that she'd pretended not to know.

It didn't matter, she thought. She'd needed to see what he felt, and she had. He needed to make a choice, needed to put his cards on the table.

Her voice softened a little as she said, "Dean, if there's some rule that says this all has to be either/or, how about we break it?"

His head tilted a little to one side as he looked at her, lips parting slightly, trying to work out what it was she telling him.

"Me and Ben will be here," she explained. It would be easier on all of them, she'd thought. Easier for her and Ben to get on with their lives. Easier for him to have what he wanted. "And you come when you can. Just come in one piece. Okay?"

"You really think we can pull something like that off?" he asked, and she could see he was trying to buy some time, time to give his emotions a chance to settle, time to think if her tentative plan would work, time to realise that he wasn't going to lose them.

"It's worth a shot, right?" She smiled at him, and his mouth lifted slightly, though he couldn't meet her eyes again. When he did look up, one brow lifted slightly, he looked relieved.

"You scared the crap out of me, you know that?"

"Sorry."

She wasn't, not really. She'd given him a back door, an out clause, and it had scared her to death to do it, even knowing how much he needed one. And she'd needed to know how committed he was, if he wanted to be with them or not. She was glad that he did, but her heart was still thumping from the possibility that he might have just agreed with her, and gone.

"Yeah … sorry." His mouth twisted slightly as he looked at her. "When does Ben get home?"

"'Bout an hour and a half, he said." The corners of her mouth tucked up slightly, the dimples to either side appearing.

"Plenty of time." He lifted his gaze to the ceiling above them. "Feel like making it up to me?"

She laughed at the suggestive one-sided smile he offered her, and nodded, holding out her hand.


End file.
